Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
Volume 144, Issue 4, Pages 796-815Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/xge0000083
Keywords
ego depletion; self-control; self-regulation; meta-analysis; publication bias
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Funding
- John Templeton Foundation
- National Science Foundation
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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.
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