A series of meta-analytic tests of the depletion effect: Self-control does not seem to rely on a limited resource.

Abstract

Failures of self-control are thought to underlie various important behaviors (e.g., addiction, violence, obesity, poor academic achievement). The modern conceptualization of self-control failure has been heavily influenced by the idea that self-control functions as if it relied upon a limited physiological or cognitive resource. This view of self-control has inspired hundreds of experiments designed to test the prediction that acts of self-control are more likely to fail when they follow previous acts of self-control (the depletion effect). Here, we evaluated the empirical evidence for this effect with a series of focused, meta-analytic tests that address the limitations in prior appraisals of the evidence. We find very little evidence that the depletion effect is a real phenomenon, at least when assessed with the methods most frequently used in the laboratory. Our results strongly challenge the idea that self-control functions as if it relies on a limited psychological or physical resource.

Entertainment as a Creature Comfort: Self-Control and Selection of Challenging Media

“…Lab studies have failed to replicate commonly cited effects (Hagger & Chatzisarantis, 2016;Xu et al, 2014), leading to concern that self-control may not function as conceptualized or only in specific domains such as cognitive performance (Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015). However, others argued that reviewing the idea of selfcontrol in terms of motivational and attentional focus may reconcile past findings (Inzlicht, Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014).…”

Food for happy thought: Glucose protects age-related positivity effects under cognitive load.

“…Thus, successful performance in dual-task paradigms is more cognitively demanding (e.g., requiring more complex attentional or strategic processes; Pashler, 1994) than self-control tasks, which allow participants to direct all available resources toward a single task. If glucose effects are mostly evident for tasks that tap into multiple cognitive functions simultaneously (Scholey et al, 2013), ego depletion should be unaffected by glucose administration (e.g., Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015), whereas dual task performance should show a systematic modulation.…”

Do they Aggress Earlier? Investigating the Effects of Ego Depletion on Police Officers’ Use of Force Behavior

“…For example, recent meta-analytic evidence (Carter and McCullough 2014;Carter et al 2015;Hagger and Chatzisarantis 2016) does not support the proposition that self-control relies on a limited resource, when tested in laboratory settings. Likewise, a multilab preregistered replication study of the ego depletion effect with 23 laboratories (N = 2141) using a sequential task paradigm failed to replicate the ego depletion effect, providing evidence that, if there is any ego depletion effect, it is close to zero.…”