Touré-Tillery Maferima, Fishbach Ayelet
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2015 Dec;109(6):1117-31. doi: 10.1037/a0039536. Epub 2015 Sep 28.
This research tests the hypothesis that individuals exercise restraint for actions that reflect on their self-concept (i.e., self-diagnostic actions). Experiments 1 and 2 show an action framed as occurring at the beginning or end (vs. middle) of a constructed sequence is seen as more self-diagnostic. Accordingly, Experiment 3 finds more restraint in snack choices at the framed beginning or end (vs. middle). Furthermore, the degree of importance of a goal-which reflects its centrality to the self-concept-determines responses to self-diagnosticity cues such as framed positions. Specifically, participants committed to financial goals (Experiment 4) and health goals (Experiment 5) were more likely to make decisions consistent with these goals at the beginning or end, but indulged and splurged in the middle. Experiment 6 shows similar patterns for judgments of magazine subscriptions, but only when individuals are faced with a decision that poses a self-control conflict for them. These results highlight the role of the self in self-control by demonstrating that people exercise restraint when decision contexts seem more telling of the self.
本研究检验了这样一个假设，即个体对反映其自我概念的行为（即自我诊断行为）会进行克制。实验1和实验2表明，在一个构建的序列开头或结尾（相对于中间）发生的行为，被视为更具自我诊断性。相应地，实验3发现，在序列开头或结尾（相对于中间）框架下的零食选择中，克制程度更高。此外，目标的重要程度——反映其对自我概念的核心程度——决定了对诸如框架位置等自我诊断线索的反应。具体而言，致力于财务目标（实验4）和健康目标（实验5）的参与者，更有可能在开头或结尾做出与这些目标一致的决策，但在中间会放纵和挥霍。实验6表明，在杂志订阅判断中也有类似模式，但只有当个体面临对他们构成自我控制冲突的决策时才会如此。这些结果通过证明当决策情境似乎更能说明自我时人们会进行克制，突出了自我在自我控制中的作用。
