Cognitive Dissonance and College Athletes’ Ego-depletion:The Precaution of Self Affirmation

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that cognitive dissonance brought athletes' ego-depletion,and to discuss the different self-affirmation that could prevent the athletes' ego depletion.This paper carried on two experiments by the double-task experimental paradigms.In experiment 1,20 college athletes engaged in the cognitive dissonance task for five minutes and then performed a Stroop task.The results showed that the participants made more in non-match mistaken numbers than the others,and the result showed that cognitive dissonance brought ego depletion.In experiment 2,60 college athletes engaged in value affirmation,attribute affirmation,and no affirmation task respectively for five minutes at first,and then finished the cognitive dissonance task for five minutes.At last,the participants performed a Stroop task.The result showed that the athletes who experienced value affirmation made less faults in non-match mistaken numbers than others.However,there was no difference between the athletes who experienced attribution affirmation and the control ones.It suggested that only value affirmation could prevent the athletes' ego depletion caused by cognitive dissonance.