内隐联想测验中他人重要性对自我心理表征的影响

The Mental Representation of the Self in the Implicit Association Test: The Role of the Other

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1为陌生人,实验2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。

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 rewarded.Some recent neuroscience studies demonstrated that self-related stimuli induced neural activity changes in regions recruited during reward.The apparent overlap between self and reward might imply that the selfrelated stimuli equaled to those things that have high degrees of value for us,both of which could facilitate the cognitive processing.Therefore,in the present study,we aim to investigate whether the self is similar to high-reward.Twenty-three and thirty college students were selected randomly to participate in Exp.1 and Exp.2 respectively.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)'.After that,they completed a perceptual matching task in which they decided whether the figure and the label were matched or not.Secondly,they were asked to conduct an Implicit Association Test(IAT)in which two response keys were used to classify four categories of stimuli(categorizing self-figures and high rewards together with one response key,and other-figures and low rewards together with another response key in the compatible condition;categorizing self-figures and low rewards together with one response key,and other-figures and high rewards with the other in the incompatible condition).The results showed that there was a robust self-bias in the perceptual matching task:higher accuracy and faster responses to the figures associated with self than to the figures associated with others(strangers in Exp.1,friends in Exp.2).In the IAT task,we found that neither the RT between the compatible and incompatible task nor the D value was significant when the other was a stranger in Exp.1,which meant that there was no similarity between the self and the high-reward.However,both the RT between the compatible and incompatible tasks and the D value were significant when the other was one’s best friend in Exp.2,which meant that self was similar to the high-reward.To summarize,the similarity between self and high-reward was affected by the role of the other to the self.The similarity increased when the other was the friend.This was 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 allocated to more money,which made the participants feel being the threat.However,it did not make too much sense when the same response key was assigned to the stranger and the high reward.In conclusion,the mental representation of self is altered by the role of the other,and supported the Self-evaluation Maintenance Model proposed by Tesser et.al.(1988).