Effects of self-transcendence on neural responses to persuasive messages and health behavior change
Effects of self-transcendence on neural responses to persuasive messages and health behavior change
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1805573115
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发表时间：
2018-10-02
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Falk, Emily B.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kang, Yoona;Cooper, Nicole;Falk, Emily B.
自我超越是指心态从关注自身利益转向关注他人福祉的转变。我们通过研究自我超越在促进健康信息和行为改变的接受度方面的机制，提供了一种在说服性信息背景下自我超越的综合神经模型。具体来说，我们假设，关注超越自我的价值观和活动可以让人们看到他们的自我价值与所讨论的特定行为无关，进而变得更容易接受随后的、否则具有威胁性的健康信息。为了测试在传递信息之前诱导自我超越心态是否有助于克服防御性并提高接受性，我们使用了两项启动任务：肯定和同情，以在 220 名久坐的成年人中引发超越心态。经过预先登记，那些在健康信息曝光之前完成自我超越任务的人，与对照组相比，在接下来的一个月里客观记录的体力活动水平出现了更大的增加。在大脑中，自我超越任务会上调腹内侧前额叶皮层区域的活动，该区域因其在积极评价和奖励处理中的作用而被选中。在随后的健康信息暴露过程中，自我超越启动与腹内侧前额叶皮层子区域的活动增加有关，涉及自我相关处理和积极评价，这预示着随后久坐行为的减少。目前的研究结果表明，拥有积极的自我超越心态可以增加行为改变，部分是通过增加神经对健康信息的接受能力来实现的。
Self-transcendence refers to a shift in mindset from focusing on self-interests to the well-being of others. We offer an integrative neural model of self-transcendence in the context of persuasive messaging by examining the mechanisms of self-transcendence in promoting receptivity to health messages and behavior change. Specifically, we posited that focusing on values and activities that transcend the self can allow people to see that their self-worth is not tied to a specific behavior in question, and in turn become more receptive to subsequent, otherwise threatening health information. To test whether inducing self-transcendent mindsets before message delivery would help overcome defensiveness and increase receptivity, we used two priming tasks, affirmation and compassion, to elicit a transcendent mindset among 220 sedentary adults. As preregistered, those who completed a self-transcendence task before health message exposure, compared with controls, showed greater increases in objectively logged levels of physical activity throughout the following month. In the brain, self-transcendence tasks upregulated activity in a region of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, chosen for its role in positive valuation and reward processing. During subsequent health message exposure, self-transcendence priming was associated with increased activity in subregions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, implicated in self-related processing and positive valuation, which predicted later decreases in sedentary behavior. The present findings suggest that having a positive self-transcendent mindset can increase behavior change, in part by increasing neural receptivity to health messaging.