No Evidence of the Ego-Depletion Effect across Task Characteristics and Individual Differences: A Pre-Registered Study

Abstract

Ego-depletion, a psychological phenomenon in which participants are less able to engage in self-control after prior exertion of self-control, has become widely popular in the scientific community as well as in the media. However, considerable debate exists among researchers as to the nature of the ego-depletion effect, and growing evidence suggests the effect may not be as strong or robust as the extant literature suggests. We examined the robustness of the ego-depletion effect and aimed to maximize the likelihood of detecting the effect by using one of the most widely used depletion tasks (video-viewing attention control task) and by considering task characteristics and individual differences that potentially moderate the effect. We also sought to make our research plan transparent by pre-registering our hypotheses, procedure, and planned analyses prior to data collection. Contrary to the ego-depletion hypothesis, participants in the depletion condition did not perform worse than control participants on the subsequent self-control task, even after considering moderator variables. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting ego-depletion is not a reliable phenomenon, though more research is needed that uses large sample sizes, considers moderator variables, and pre-registers prior to data collection.

The Effect of Implicit Preferences on Food Consumption: Moderating Role of Ego Depletion and Impulsivity

“…Some researchers have questioned the authenticity of the depletion effect (Carter et al, 2015). One pre-registered replication study found no evidence of an ego depletion effect (Lurquin et al, 2016). Similarly, a multi-lab pre-registered replication study found minimal evidence of a depletion effect (Hagger et al, 2016; for a commentary, see Baumeister and Vohs, 2016).…”

“…Yet very little understanding of potential moderators exists (Lurquin et al, 2016). According to capacity-based theories, self-control is a dispositional, trait-like construct that differs across individuals (e.g., Tangney et al, 2004; de Ridder et al, 2012).…”

Pot la psicologia rescatar-se a si mateixa?. Incentius, biaix i replicabilitat

“…Entre aquests efectes estan, per exemple, el de la posa de poder i altres efectes similars de corporització (Rane hill, Dreber, Johannesson, Leiberg, Sul i Weber, 2015), els de depleció de l'ego (Lurquin i al., 2016), molts dels efectes de facilitació social (Rohrer, Pashler i Harris, 2015;Shanks i al., 2015) i una bona part de les intervencions psicotera pèutiques en diferents contextos d'aplicació (Van der Gucht i al., 2016;Coyne, Thombs i Hagedoorn, 2010).…”

Evaluating Effort: Influences of Evaluation Mode on Judgments of Task‐specific Efforts

“…Cognitive effort is a far more challenging construct to define and study empirically (Botvinick & Braver, ; Dunn & Risko, ; Kurzban, ; Westbrook & Braver, ). Although many accounts have attempted to generalize the energetic aspect of physical effort accounts to cognitive effort accounts (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, ; Boksem & Tops, ; Gailliot & Baumeister, ), this premise has been met with a large amount of skepticism on the basis of theoretical and empirical grounds (e.g., Botvinick & Braver, ; Carter & McCullough, ; Gibson, ; Hockey, ; Inzlicht & Schmeichel, , ; Job, Walton, Bernecker, & Dweck, ; Kelly, Sünram‐Lea, & Crawford, ; Lange & Eggert, ; Lurquin et al, ; Kurzban, ; Kurzban, Duckworth, Kable, & Myers, ; Raichle & Mintun, ; Vadillo, Gold, & Osman, ; Westbrook & Braver, ). Furthermore, whether or not similar systems underlie evaluation of both physical and cognitive effort remains to be determined (Westbrook & Braver, ; cf.…”