Abstract
To examine the effect of digital technology on the tripartite model of self-construal from the perspective of behavior and neural correlates using the event-related potential technology, the present study carried out two experiments. Experiment 1 invited 20 digital natives and 20 digital immigrants to participate in a priming task, in which Internet- and non-Internet-related words were used as priming words and the target stimuli included the individual self (the participant’s name), relational self (his/her good friend’s name), and collective self (his/her class’s name). The participants judged the color (red, green, or blue) of the target stimulus. Experiment 2 invited 24 digital natives and 24 digital immigrants to participate in a priming task, while recording the event-related potentials (ERPs) of each participant. The results showed that individual self elicited shorter RT and larger amplitudes of P2 and P300 than those of relational self and collective self, which suggested that the comparative advantage of the individual self, but when digital natives processed individual self, Internet priming induced smaller P2 amplitude than non-Internet priming. Moreover, the comparative advantage of the relational self and collective self was not obvious, and could be influenced by digital technology, specifically, for the relational self of digital natives, the RT in Internet priming was significantly longer than that in non-Internet priming, whereas for the collective self of digital immigrants, the RT in Internet priming was significantly longer than that in non-Internet priming. These findings verify and extend the tripartite model of self-construal while support the contextual dominancy hypothesis.
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The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by The Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science project [2022YJA190006], fund for building world-class universities (disciplines) of Renmin University of China (RUCPSY0001), Fundamental Research Funds of Central China Normal University [CCNU19QN042], and fund for Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province[2019CFB425]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Zhao, G., Zhang, H., Kong, F. et al. Do digital experiences change the self-relevant process of digital natives? A view of tripartite self-construal. Curr Psychol 42, 27799–27812 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03757-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03757-w