The Influence Of Self-Control On Altruistic Behavior Of Violent / Non-Violent Male Inmates

Self-control refers to a psychological ability to self-regulate behaviors,emotions,thoughts,etc.,and to make them conform to self-value,social expectations and moral codes.Previous researches at home and abroad divide self-control into two types: trait self-control and state self-control.The trait self-control emphasizes the relative stability of self-control from the perspective of personality traits,while the state self-control emphasizes the volatility of self-control from the perspective of limited resources.Therefore,laboratory researches at home and abroad manipulate self-control resource depletion to explore the state self-control,so does this paper.With the development of implicit social cognition,more and more studies explore altruistic behavior from an implicit or explicit perspective.The explicit altruistic behavior refers to the behavior of the individual voluntarily benefiting others,however,without seeking any spiritual or material rewards,and it emphasizes the conscious behavior;while the implicit altruistic behavior refers to the behavior of the individual unconsciously benefiting others and it results from long-term internalization of social ethics.According to Greenwald's overview of implicit social cognition,implicit altruistic behavior is a kind of implicit attitude,but it is expressed as implicit altruistic behavior in this paper out of coherence.Altruistic behavior calls for control on the internal self-interest motivation,so domestic and foreign studies regard self-control as one important factor affecting altruistic behavior.It attaches great social significance to explore the relationship between self-control and altruistic behavior of inmates.However,relative research is scarce.The possible reasons are as follows: First,there is no trait self-control scale for inmates;Secondly,there is quite a few differences in psychological or behavioral traits between the ordinary people and inmates.Thirdly,the traits of explicit or implicit altruistic behaviors of inmates remain unknown.Fourth,few studies have studied altruistic behavior in combination with trait self-control and state self-control,therefore,lacking theory support.Considering the above reasons,this paper conducts three studies with male inmates as subjects in order to provide empirical support for carrying out relevant research afterwards.Study 1 was to revise a trait self-control scale for male inmates.It was mainly used for dividing subjects into high or low trait self-control group.Therefore,this paper did not further investigate state self-control of male inmates.Study 2 was to explore the differences of explicit and implicit altruistic behavior between violent and non-violent male inmates without self-control resource depletion and separating trait self-control level.Study 2 consisted of two parallel experiments: Experiment 1a used one-factor between-subject design to explore the difference of explicit altruistic behavior between violent and non-violent male inmates.The independent variable was violence type and the dependent variable was the amount of money given in the dictator game;Experiment 1b used one-factor between-subject design to explore the difference of the implicit altruistic behavior between violent and non-violent male prisoner.The independent variable was violence type and the dependent variable was difference of natural logarithmic value between the fourth and seventh parts in the implicit association test.On the basis of Study 2,Study 3 further explored the influence of high/low trait self-control and self-control resource depletion on the explicit and implicit altruistic behavior of violent and non-violent male inmates.Study 3 consisted of two parallel experiments: Experiment 2a used 2(trait self-control: high trait/low trait)× 2(self-control resource depletion: high depletion/low depletion)× 2(type of violence: violent / non-violent)three-factor between-subject design to explore the influences of three factors on male inmates' explicit altruistic behavior.Trait self-control,self-control resource depletion and violence type were between-subject variables and the dependent variable was the same as experiment 1a;Experiment 2b used 2(trait self-control: high trait/low trait)× 2(self-control resource depletion: high depletion/low-depletion)×2(type of violence: violent/non-violent)three-factor between-subject design to explore the influences of three factors on implicit altruistic behavior of male inmates.Trait self-control,self-control resource depletion and violence type were between-subject variables and the dependent variable was the same as experiment 1b.Through the above three studies,the paper drawn the following conclusions:(1)The revised trait self-control scale met the psychometric standards and could be used to explore the traits self-control of male inmates;(2)There existed significant difference of explicit altruistic behavior between violent and non-violent inmates: violent inmates gave fewer money to strangers than non-violent inmates,indicating that non-violent inmates were more altruistic than violent inmates;(3)There was significant difference of the implicit altruistic behavior between violent and non-violent inmates: the value of the implicit altruistic effect was smaller in the violent inmates,indicating that the non-violent inmates had a greater connection to implicit altruistic behavior codes;(4)Two types of altruistic behavior were not significantly related regardless of violence type,indicating that there might be two different psychological mechanisms for the altruistic behavior of the male inmates;(5)Only in the high trait self-control,non-violent level,high depletion group gave less money than low depletion group,indicating that altruistic behavior of low trait self-control group was unaffected by self-depletion regardless of what violence type they were,so did violent male inmates in high trait self-control group.But the altruistic behavior of non-violent inmates in high trait self-control group was affected by self-depletion.(6)In high trait self-control,low depletion level and low trait self-control,high depletion level,the difference of implicit altruistic effect was significant between violent and non-violent male inmates.The difference was smaller in the violent group,indicating that in low depletion state,the violent type had an influence on the implicit altruistic behavior of high trait self-control group,so did low trait self-control group in high depletion state.