If ego depletion cannot be studied using identical tasks, it is not ego depletion

Abstract

The hypothesis that human self-control capacities are fueled by glucose has been challenged on multiple grounds. A recent study by Lange and Eggert adds to this criticism by presenting two powerful but unsuccessful attempts to replicate the effect of sugar drinks on ego depletion. The dual-task paradigms employed in these experiments have been criticized for involving identical self-control tasks, a methodology that has been argued to reduce participants' willingness to exert self-control. The present article addresses this criticism by demonstrating that there is no indication to believe that the study of glucose effects on ego depletion should be restricted to paradigms using dissimilar acts of self-control. Failures to observe such effects in paradigms involving identical tasks pose a serious problem to the proposal that self-control exhaustion might be reversed by rinsing or ingesting glucose. In combination with analyses of statistical credibility, the experiments by Lange and Eggert suggest that the influence of sugar on ego depletion has been systematically overestimated.