›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 633-638.

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The mental representation of the self in the implicit association test:The role of the other

  

  • Received:2018-06-14 Revised:2018-11-29 Online:2019-05-20 Published:2019-05-20

内隐联想测验中他人重要性对自我心理表征的影响

王凌云1,王爱君2,齐宇欣1,范丫1,3,张明4   

  1. 1. 东北师范大学
    2. 苏州大学心理学系
    3. 南京大学
    4. 苏州大学教育学院
  • 通讯作者: 张明

Abstract: Self-bias reflects a fundamental cognitive ability that human beings can distinguish the self from others. There are many instances in which People seem to be biased towards information related to themselves compared with other people in perception, memory and attention. One major account of self -bias effect is that self-related information is intrinsically reward, some recent neuroscience studies demonstrated that self -related stimuli induce neural activity changes in regions recruited during reward. The apparent overlap between self and reward may tell us that the self-related stimuli equaled to those things that have high degrees of value for us, both of them could facilitate the cognitive processing. Therefore, in the present study, we aim to investigate whether the self is similar to high-reward or not. Twenty-three and thirty college students were selected randomly to participant in Exp.1 and Exp.2. The two experiments were divided into two successive sessions separately. Firstly, the participants were asked to associate the geometric figures ellipse or triangle with themselves or the others such as "Ellipse represents yourself and triangle represents a stranger(Exp.1) or your best friend(Exp.2)", then they completed a perceptual matching task in which to decide whether the figure and the label are matched or not. Secondly, they were asked to conduct an Implicit Association Test (IAT) in which to press two response keys to classify the stimuli including four categories (the compatible task refers to the same response key to self-figure and high reward and the incompatible task refers to the same response key to the other-figure and low reward). The results showed that there was a robust self-bias in perceptual matching task-- higher accuracy and faster responses to the figures associated with self than to the figures associated with the other (stranger in Exp.1, friends in Exp.2). In the IAT task, the results showed that neither the RTs between the compatible task and the incompatible task nor the D value was significant when the others was a stranger in Exp.1, which means that there was no similarity between the self and the high-reward. However, both the RT between the compatible task and the incompatible task and the D value were significant when the other was one's best friend in Exp.2, which means that self was similar to the high-reward. To summarize, the similarity of self and high-reward was affected by the other to self, the similarity increased when the other was the friend compared to the stranger. This is due to the context of the reward, when the same response key was assigned to the friend and the high reward, it seemed that the friend was assigned to more money, which made the participants feel being to threaten, but it didn't make too much sense to me when the same response key was assigned to the stranger and the high reward. In conclusion, the similarity of self and high-reward was important for individual survival , and supported the Self-evaluation Maintenance Model proposed by Tesser et al(1988).

Key words: Self-bias, Similarity of self and high-reward, the role of the other

摘要: 联合采用联想匹配任务和内隐联想测验(IAT)任务,考察了自我—他人分类中的他人重要性对自我—高奖赏相似性的影响。研究将中性的几何图形与自我、不同重要性的他人(实验一为陌生人,实验二为朋友)建立联结,并将自我(暂时建立联结的图形)高奖赏联合任务与自我低奖赏联合任务下的反应差异(即IAT值)作为自我—高奖赏相似性的指标,结果表明:(1)联想匹配任务中自我和朋友以及自我和陌生人之间都存在显著的自我优势效应;(2)IAT任务中,自我和高奖赏只在他人为朋友的自我—他人分类判断时才具有相似性,而他人为陌生人时二者不具有相似性。这说明他人重要性改变了自我的心理表征。

关键词: 自我优势, 自我—高奖赏相似性, 他人重要性