The Influence Of Self-depletion On Pro-social Behavior:the Moderating Effect Of Action-state Orientation

Pro-social behavior refers to individuals who sacrifice everything to benefit others and make behaviors that the society appreciates and encourages.It is the behavior of individuals to comply with the rules and regulations of the society and meet the expectations of the public.There are many factors that affect individual pro-social behaviors,such as emotions and motivations.One of the important factors affecting individual pro-social behavior is ego depletion.Previous studies have conducted a lot of discussions on the ego depletion effect,but they have ignored the individual’s “habit formation” stage,that is,neglected the role of personality factors in the process of ego depletion effect.Therefore,in order to further broaden the theoretical perspective of ego depletion research,this study aims to investigate the influence of different degrees of ego depletion on pro-social behavior and the moderating role of the personality trait of action-state orientation.This study included three studies,with 554 participants participating in the study.Both study 1 and study 2 used scales to measure the pro-social behavior tendency of the participants,verify the influence of different degrees of ego depletion on pro-social behavior tendency,at the same time explore the moderating role of action-state orientation in both.Study 3 used the dictator game experiment to measure the pro-social behavior of the subjects,verifying the moderating effect of action-state orientation on the influence of ego depletion on pro-social behavior.The results show that:(1)High ego depletion will indeed affect the individual’s subsequent pro-social behavior tendency.Specifically,the scores of subjects in the high ego depletion group on the Pro-Social Behavior Tendency Scale are lower than those in the low ego depletion group.(2)For state-oriented individuals,subjects in the high ego depletion group tended to have fewer pro-social behaviors.Specifically,the pro-social behavior tendency scale score of the high ego depletion group was significantly lower than that of the low ego depletion group;but for action-oriented individuals,there was no significant difference in the pro-social behavior tendency of subjects with different levels of attrition.(3)Action-state orientation also has a moderating effect on the relationship between ego depletion and pro-social behavior.Specifically,As the degree of attrition increased,the amount allocated by the action-oriented subjects in the dictator task did not change significantly;while the amount allocated by the state-oriented subjects in the task would be significantly reduced.This study measured the impact of the interaction of personality variables(action-state orientation)and contextual variables(different degrees of ego depletion effect)on pro-social behavior,and observed the effects of individuals in different degrees of ego depletion.This not only deeply explores the inner psychological mechanism of pro-social behavior,but also provides research evidence for the "resource depletion model under the influence of action-state orientation" in the field of pro-social behavior.