Abstract
The exertion of self-control is known to result in subsequent detrimental effects on prosocial behaviors. Moreover, certain studies have demonstrated that positive emotions could drive people to allocate more attentional resources for conducting prosocial behaviors. However, whether and how awe – one important type of positive incidental emotion – moderates the effect of exerting self-control on subsequent prosocial behaviors remains unclear yet. The anonymous economic dictator game is an effective index of prosocial behaviors. We examined the influence of exerting self-control on prosocial behavior and the moderating role of awe on the effect of exerting self-control on prosocial behaviors in two experiments (N = 280). We adopted the incongruent Stroop task to induce the exertion of self-control and participants were required to allocate money to others in the anonymous dictator game (Experiment 1). We used the narrative recall task paradigm to elicit the emotion of awe during the interval between Stroop tasks and the dictator game (Experiment 2). Results indicated that the exertion of self-control was detrimental to prosocial behaviors and awe weakened the detrimental effects of exerting self-control on prosocial behavior. We interpreted these results in terms of the protective inhibition of self-regulation and motivation (PRISM) model.
Highlights
Self-control is an important ability that allows people to manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions, ranging from executive cognitive functions like attention control to higher-order processes such as affect-regulation (Gendolla et al, 2015)
We found that the protective inhibition of self-regulation and motivation (PRISM) model might be a reasonable and appropriate model for predicting the moderating effects of the awe on the relationship between exerting self-control and prosocial behaviors
We analyzed the mean amount of money allocated to the other person across the eight rounds by each participant, by conducting an Independent sample t-test to examine the effect of the preceding exertion of self-control on the money that was allocated to the other person between two conditions
Summary
Self-control is an important ability that allows people to manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions, ranging from executive cognitive functions like attention control to higher-order processes such as affect-regulation (Gendolla et al, 2015). Experimental evidence has demonstrated that people are less likely to behave prosocially after an initial act requiring self-control (Dewall et al, 2007; Mead et al, 2009; Gino et al, 2011), presumably because they needed to override their automatic selfish impulses by exerting self-control (Dewall et al, 2008; Joosten et al, 2015). People who did not conduct an initial act of self-control demonstrated the highest executive capacity to control selfish impulses and behave prosocially to others (Gino et al, 2011; Kai et al, 2014; Kai, 2018). It is possible that performing a task involving self-control would subsequently decrease prosocial behaviors.
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