Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Oct 2;115(40):9974-9979. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1805573115. Epub 2018 Sep 17.
Self-transcendence refers to a shift in mindset from focusing on self-interests to the well-being of others. We offer an integrative neural model of self-transcendence in the context of persuasive messaging by examining the mechanisms of self-transcendence in promoting receptivity to health messages and behavior change. Specifically, we posited that focusing on values and activities that transcend the self can allow people to see that their self-worth is not tied to a specific behavior in question, and in turn become more receptive to subsequent, otherwise threatening health information. To test whether inducing self-transcendent mindsets before message delivery would help overcome defensiveness and increase receptivity, we used two priming tasks, affirmation and compassion, to elicit a transcendent mindset among 220 sedentary adults. As preregistered, those who completed a self-transcendence task before health message exposure, compared with controls, showed greater increases in objectively logged levels of physical activity throughout the following month. In the brain, self-transcendence tasks up-regulated activity in a region of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, chosen for its role in positive valuation and reward processing. During subsequent health message exposure, self-transcendence priming was associated with increased activity in subregions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, implicated in self-related processing and positive valuation, which predicted later decreases in sedentary behavior. The present findings suggest that having a positive self-transcendent mindset can increase behavior change, in part by increasing neural receptivity to health messaging.
自我超越是指从关注自身利益转变为关注他人的幸福。我们在有说服力的信息传递背景下提出了一个自我超越的综合神经模型，通过考察自我超越在促进健康信息接受和行为改变方面的机制来研究自我超越。具体来说，我们假设专注于超越自我的价值观和活动可以让人们认识到自己的自我价值不取决于特定的行为，从而更容易接受随后的、否则具有威胁性的健康信息。为了测试在传递信息之前诱导自我超越心态是否有助于克服防御心理并提高接受度，我们使用了两种启动任务，肯定和同情，来激发 220 名久坐不动的成年人的超越心态。按照预先注册的要求，与对照组相比，那些在接触健康信息之前完成自我超越任务的人，在接下来的一个月里，他们的身体活动水平明显提高。在大脑中，自我超越任务会增加腹内侧前额叶皮层的活动，这是因为它在积极评价和奖励处理中发挥作用。在随后的健康信息暴露期间，自我超越启动与腹内侧前额叶皮层的子区域活动增加有关，这些区域与自我相关的处理和积极评价有关，这预示着随后久坐行为的减少。本研究结果表明，积极的自我超越心态可以增加行为改变，部分原因是增加了对健康信息的神经接受度。
