Yan-Gang Nie

Too exhausted to remember: Ego depletion undermines subsequent event-based prospective memory

Past research has consistently found that people are likely to do worse on high-level cognitive tasks after exerting self-control on previous actions. However, little has been unraveled about to what extent ego depletion affects subsequent prospective memory. Drawing upon the self-control strength model and the relationship between self-control resources and executive control, this study proposes that the initial actions of self-control may undermine subsequent event-based prospective memory (EBPM). Ego depletion was manipulated through watching a video requiring visual attention (Experiment 1) or completing an incongruent Stroop task (Experiment 2). Participants were then tested on EBPM embedded in an ongoing task. As predicted, the results showed that after ruling out possible intervening variables (e.g. mood, focal and nonfocal cues, and characteristics of ongoing task and ego depletion task), participants in the high-depletion condition performed significantly worse on EBPM than those in the low-depletion condition. The results suggested that the effect of ego depletion on EBPM was mainly due to an impaired prospective component rather than to a retrospective component.

The relationship between self-control, job satisfaction and life satisfaction in Chinese employees: A preliminary study

BACKGROUND Previous studies have demonstrated that self-control is positively related to life satisfaction, but this association in Chinese employees and its underlying mechanism are less commonly investigated. OBJECTIVE In this preliminary study the relationships between self-control and life satisfaction and the mediating effect of job satisfaction were tested. METHOD Participants were 482 full-time employees (188 male, 294 female) from different cities in China. They answered self-report questionnaires online that assessed self-control, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction. Path analyses were conducted and bootstrap technique was used to judge the significance of the mediation. RESULTS Self-control was positively related to both job and life satisfaction. More importantly, job satisfaction significantly mediated the association between self-control and life satisfaction. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in the size of the mediating effect between intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS Results of this preliminary study provide further evidence of the positive association between self-control and life satisfaction. Job satisfaction is found to mediate this relationship.

From China to Italy: Validation of the adolescent self-consciousness questionnaire

This study aimed at validating a Chinese questionnaire on self-consciousness for Italian adolescents. Self-consciousness is a hierarchical construct of self which comprehends self-evaluation, self-experience and self-monitoring. 1138 Italian adolescents filled in the Adolescent Self-Consciousness questionnaire and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis with cross-validation procedure was adopted to strengthen the findings. Results confirmed the second-order factor structure proposed by the authors showed good psychometric properties and discrete criteria validity, suggesting that the ASC could be a reliable and suitable measure to assess self-consciousness in Italian youths.

Perceiving high social mindfulness during interpersonal interaction promotes cooperative behaviours

Social mindfulness refers to individual’s respect and protection of others’ options in interpersonal interaction. The object-choosing task is a traditional paradigm to assess social mindfulness. Individuals with high social mindfulness would choose the nonunique object so that others would have more options; on the contrary, individuals with low social mindfulness would choose the unique object, which limits others’ choices. No prior study has examined whether perceiving people with different levels of social mindfulness affects one’s cooperation. Based on this background, two experiments were conducted to address this question. In both experiments, a confederate participant’s (Player A’s) social mindfulness was manipulated by setting the frequency that Player A chose the unique and the nonunique objects. Then, participants were asked to interact with Player A in the public goods game (Experiment 1) or in the centipede game (Experiment 2). Convergent results showed that compared to those interacting with a socially unmindful person, participants interacting with a person perceived as socially mindful contributed more resources in the public goods game and chose to pass on more rounds in the centipede game. These findings suggest that perception of others’ high social mindfulness enhances one’s own cooperative behaviour.