The propagation of self-control: Self-control in one domain simultaneously improves self-control in other domains.

Abstract

A rich tradition in self-control research has documented the negative consequences of exerting self-control in one task for self-control performance in subsequent tasks. However, there is a dearth of research examining what happens when people exert self-control in multiple domains simultaneously. The current research aims to fill this gap. We integrate predictions from the most prominent models of self-control with recent neuropsychological insights in the human inhibition system to generate the novel hypothesis that exerting effortful self-control in one task can simultaneously improve self-control in completely unrelated domains. An internal meta-analysis on all 18 studies we conducted shows that exerting self-control in one domain (i.e., controlling attention, food consumption, emotions or thoughts) simultaneously improves self-control in a range of other domains, as demonstrated by, for example, reduced unhealthy food consumption, better Stroop task performance, and less impulsive decision making. A subset of nine studies demonstrates the crucial nature of task timing -when the same tasks are executed sequentially, our results suggest the emergence of an ego depletion effect. We provide conservative estimates of the self-control facilitation (d = |0.22|) as well as the ego depletion effect size (d = |0.17|) free of data selection and publication biases. These results (i) shed new light on self-control theories, (ii) confirm recent claims that previous estimates of the ego depletion effect size were inflated due to publication bias, and (iii) provide a blueprint for how to handle the power issues and associated file drawer problems commonly encountered in multi-study research projects.

How to Make Nothing Out of Something: Analyses of the Impact of Study Sampling and Statistical Interpretation in Misleading Meta-Analytic Conclusions

“…Such findings would presumably get high priority for publication. The handful that have been published (e.g., Apfelbaum and Sommers, 2009; DeWall et al, 2011; Carter and McCullough, 2013a; Tuk et al, 2015) reflect highly unusual, specifically designed circumstances. For example, DeWall et al (2011) found that leaders often disdained low-level work, but when they were depleted, they ceased to assess whether tasks were suitable for them and simply did their best on everything, resulting in an improvement compared to non-depleted leaders.…”

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

“…The lack of a main effect of ego depletion on food consumption is consistent with recent research (Carter et al, 2015). Some researchers have contended that the ego depletion effect is substantially smaller than published literature implies (Carter and McCullough, 2013, 2014; Tuk et al, 2015; see Hagger and Chatzisarantis, 2014, for a response to this argument). Some researchers have questioned the authenticity of the depletion effect (Carter et al, 2015).…”

Does money change political views? – An investigation of money priming and the preference for right-wing politics

“…we performed conceptual replications). Such an approach is more informative than the test of a single paradigm (Tuk, Zhang, & Sweldens, 2015) and allows examining whether a possible underlying effect is restricted to a certain measure or generalizes across several measures. Because the moderation hypothesis seemed a plausible alternative to the main-effect hypothesis, we included subjective SES as a possible moderator for the second half of our studies and conducted further studies online to increase the samples' variance on subjective SES.…”

“…Because tests for heterogeneity and moderators tend to be underpowered with small amounts of studies (k < 20; Huedo-Medina, Sánchez-Meca, Marín-Martínez, & Botella, 2006), we set the alpha level for both tests to .10 (Tuk et al, 2015). Furthermore and as an additional criterion for heterogeneity that is independent of the included number of studies, we applied I 2 > 50% as a criterion for heterogeneity (Braver et al, 2014).…”

“…To overcome power problems in single studies (Cumming, 2014;Tuk et al, 2015), we conducted a small-scale meta-analysis (Braver, Thoemmes, & Rosenthal, 2014;Goh, Hall, & Rosenthal, 2016) across our studies. The analysis is based on more data, has smaller confidence intervals for the estimated effect size and is thus more reliable in detecting whether an effect exists or not (Cumming, 2012).…”