Význam sebekontroly pro asociální chování lidí

One of the hallmarks of behavioral economics is that people's choices are strongly influenced by their ability to exert self-control in required situations. An important direction of research in social psychology and economics suggests that higher-level mental processes, such as self-control, use limited number of mental resources that can be depleted. However, the power of the ego depletion effect varies between studies, and some studies find no effect eventually.This work contributes to the understanding of the role of self-control in relation to antisocial behavior, both in terms of destructiveness and in terms of non-cooperation, using traditional economic games. I examine whether self-control depletion affects the extent to which people behave antisocially rather than prosocially.In my experiment, I manipulate participants' ego depletion using the commonly used incentivized Stroop test, followed by two other tasks, Joy-of-Desctruction game and the traditional Prisoner's Dilemma. Although, according to economic and psychological assumptions, ego depletion effect should emerge in both tasks, I find significant evidence that the tendency to antisocial, or destructive and non-cooperative behavior respectively, is not affected by the depletion of self-control resources.