Searching for the bottom of the ego well: failure to uncover ego depletion in Many Labs 3

Miguel A Vadillo,Magda Osman,Natalie Gold

doi:10.1098/rsos.180390

Miguel A Vadillo, Magda Osman + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180390

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Abstract

According to a popular model of self-control, willpower depends on a limited resource that can be depleted when we perform a task demanding self-control. This theory has been put to the test in hundreds of experiments showing that completing a task that demands high self-control usually hinders performance in any secondary task that subsequently taxes self-control. Over the last 5 years, the reliability of the empirical evidence supporting this model has been questioned. In the present study, we reanalysed data from a large-scale study—Many Labs 3—to test whether performing a depleting task has any effect on a secondary task that also relies on self-control. Although we used a large sample of more than 2000 participants for our analyses, we did not find any significant evidence of ego depletion: persistence on an anagram-solving task (a typical measure of self-control) was not affected by previous completion of a Stroop task (a typical depleting task in this literature). Our results suggest that either ego depletion is not a real effect or, alternatively, persistence in anagram solving may not be an optimal measure to test it.

Highlights

According to a popular model of self-control, willpower is in many ways analogous to a muscle [1,2]
There were many tasks between the anagram and the Stroop task, and it is possible that any depletion caused by the Stroop task may have diminished over time
We compared participants in condition anagram first (AF) with a subset of participants in condition Stroop first (SF) who had completed the anagrams immediately after the Stroop task

Summary

Introduction

According to a popular model of self-control, willpower is in many ways analogous to a muscle [1,2]. Just as a muscle gets tired, our willpower is temporarily exhausted by tasks demanding the inhibition of impulses, so that little energy remains available for future acts demanding self-control. This hypothesis has been put to the test in hundreds of laboratory experiments revealing that participants’ performance in a task that requires them to override an irrelevant dominant response is significantly poorer if prior to it they completed a different task requiring selfcontrol [3].

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