An Empirical Investigation of the Relationships Among Self-Esteem, Depression and Self-Serving Bias in People with Internet Gaming Disorder

Figures & data

Figure 1 The timeline of one trial in the self-serving bias task. Each stimulus included a description of positive or negative interpersonal event, a question and a 4-point scale. Participants were required to attribute the cause of an event to himself or herself from 1= “Very unlikely” to 4= “Very likely” in 6-s.

Table 1 Means, Standard Deviation (SD) and Correlations of the Primary Variables

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5
1. Age	21.130	2.071	1
2. Self-esteem	27.587	4.592	0.109	1
3. Depression	13.376	9.343	−0.087	−0.405***	1
4. Self-enhancement	0.003	0.235	0.145	0.223**	−0.315***	1
5. Self-protection	−0.358	0.356	0.060	−0.033	0.208*	0.019	1

Notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Table 2 Standardized Total, Direct and Indirect Effects of Model 1 and Model 2

Path Analysis	β	SE	Bootstrapping
			Bias-corrected Percentile 95% CI		Two-Tailed Significance
			Lower	Upper
Model 1
Standardized total effects
Self-esteem ---> Self-enhancement	0.212^a	0.078	0.054	0.359	0.009**
Standardized direct effects
Self-esteem ---> Depression	−0.279^a	0.088	−0.438	−0.100	0.003**
Depression ---> Self-enhancement	−0.245^a	0.082	−0.404	−0.082	0.004**
Self-esteem ---> Self-enhancement	0.144	0.074	−0.004	0.287	0.056
Standardized indirect effects
Self-esteem ---> Self-enhancement	0.068^a	0.031	0.022	0.149	0.003**
Model 2
Standardized total effects
Self-esteem ---> Self-protection	−0.040	0.076	0.054	0.359	0.580
Standardized direct effects
Self-esteem ---> Depression	−0.279^a	0.088	−0.439	−0.102	0.003**
Depression ---> Self-protection	0.185^a	0.088	0.001	0.345	0.049*
Self-esteem ---> Self-protection	0.011	0.076	−0.139	0.160	0.905
Standardized indirect effects
Self-esteem ---> Self-protection	−0.052^a	0.031	−0.129	−0.006	0.025*

Notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01; ^aRepresents that the 95% CI does not overlap with zero.

Figure 2 Path analyses depicting self-esteem to self-enhancement (Model 1) and to self-protection (Model 2) via depression. Standard parameter estimates are presented.

Notes: D1: parcel 1 of depression, D2: parcel 2 of depression, D3: parcel 3 of depression; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Figure 3 An overview of the cooperative balance ball game for self-affirmation intervention.

Figure 4 Behavioral results of Study 2. The IGD participants rated lower in the negative condition after affirming-self manipulation as compared with affirming-other manipulation, but there was no significant difference in positive condition (error bars represent standard error of the mean, **p < 0.01).

Data Sharing Statement

The data will be available from the first author Yifan Wang ([email protected]) upon reasonable requests.