ego depletion

Question 1

what is a type of self regulation

Answer 1

self control

Question 2

what is self control

Answer 2

inhibiting an impulse so a goal can be reached

Question 3

what are the three kinds of impulses and an example

Answer 3

to do something, to think something or to feel something

ex. goal to be healthy, not eat too much sugar, can you override your impulses to eat chocolate

Question 4

what is ego depletion

Answer 4

when you inhibit one impulse it makes it difficult to inhibit other impulses
-one act of self control makes subsequent more difficult

Question 5

what was the in class activity about ego depletion

Answer 5

having to control thoughts, not using “a” and “n” in words compared to a group who had to write without using “q” or “c”

• “q” and “c” is not an impulsive behavior
• the group who could not use “a” and “n” should be more likely to take candy out of lack of self control

Question 6

does ego depletion have to be two of the same impulses

Answer 6

no, the impulses do not have to be similar kinds (they can be two different things)

Question 7

does ego depletion occur all of the time

Answer 7

no, depends on the person and situation but it does exist

Question 8

what is the Baumeister study with the cookies

Answer 8

researchers baked fresh cookies
conditions:
1) some participants were told they could eat the cookies to evaluate (taste testing study)
2) told they had to eat radishes (inhibit their impulse to eat chocolate chip cookies)
3) dont eat food, no food in front of them

then all participants have to perform a difficult task, use two metal rods to maneuver a ball up a hill, the impulse in this case is to give up, ring the bell whenever you are finished (recorded how long participants did this task)

results:
no food/control: persisted on task the most, 18-20 minutes
chocolate chip cookies: persisted equally as much as the control
radish: persisted less, quit around 7 minutes

Question 9

so what are the two impulses in the Baumesiter study

Answer 9

first: to eat the delicious cookies
second: to quit something difficult

Question 10

what is the follow up Baumeister study with the emotional videos

Answer 10

participants watched emotional videos, some meant to induce sadness, some to induce joy
conditions:
1) control- simply watched videos in control, no special instructions
2) depletion condition- told to hide their emotions (don’t cry, don’t laugh)

then given words (anagrams) to unscramble

results: participants who had to suppress their emotions solved fewer of these difficult anagrams

Question 11

what are the two impulses in the follow up Baemeister study

Answer 11

first impulse: showing emotions

second impulse: giving up on a difficult task

Question 12

what is the Tice et al study about thought suppression

Answer 12

-manipulation of depletion was thought suppression

conditions:

1) thought suppression: participants told not to think about a white bear
2) control: think about anything including a white bear

measure of self control: how much of a disgusting but healthy beverage participants would drink (kool aid and vinegar) impulse is to quit drinking something disgusting

results: when they had to suppress their thoughts, they drank fewer total ounces of the drink than people who didn’t have the suppression activity beforehand

Question 13

what was the Tice follow up study about developing a new impulse

Answer 13

goal was to suppress an impulse that just involved
-all participants started the study developing a new impulse in the lab (had them spend five minutes crossing out every letter “e” in a passage in a book, the point of this is t build an impulse (see an e -> cross it out)

conditions:

1) control: had another 5 minutes doing the exact same thing, crossing out all of the e’s
2) depletion condition: cross out every “e” unless it was adjacent to another vowel, or if there was only one letter between it and another vowel (hard new rules). if you had not crossed all the “e’s” first, these rules would not have been as hard to follow. need to override an impulse

measure: same frustrating task, moving a ball with two metal rods up a hill
results: depletion condition gave up sooner

Question 14

what is the Gino depletion study about cheating

Answer 14

looked at cheating to earn more money as an impulse people would have to control
conditions:
1) depletion: showed a screen of a woman talking silently (boring). words were flashing on the side of the screen, do not look at the words, only look at the woman. we have an impulse to read (like when closed caption is on, hard to not look at the words), inhibiting the impulse for a long period of time (ego depletion)
2) control: watched video with no special instructions

participants solved matrices on a computer (rows of numbers and had to find which letters added to 10). had a slip of paper where they were supposed to bring to the experimenter and write how many they solved correct for an actual cash reward
dependent variable: did people cheat, did they say they solved more than they actually did (computer recorded actual number) measure of self control

results: gave into the impulse to try and get more money (cheated) in ego depletion group
- % of people who cheated more than doubled in the depletion group

Question 15

why were the videos 7 minutes long in the study

Answer 15

in each self control condition, people spend minutes either inhibiting impulse or not, time is important, only inhibiting for a brief time is not actually inhibiting anything

Question 16

are there a lot of ego depletion studies

Answer 16

there are hundreds of studies that show ego depletion with many different measures of self control
-self control in one domain makes it harder to exert self control in another

Question 17

what are real life examples of ego depletion

Answer 17

maybe it is why we snack more at the end of the day. we spent the entire day using self control, harder to resist.

exercising in the morning, harder to do it ay night if it is something you do not like

Question 18

president obama and ego depletion

Answer 18

he learned about this and learned that making a choice can deplete you so he avoided making simple choices to avoid depletion while making difficult choices

Question 19

so what is some advice we can learn from ego depletion

Answer 19

do not save hard things to do until the end of the day, do it earlier when you have motivation and energy

Question 20

what is the original theory for why ego depletion occurs

Answer 20

self control is believed to be a limited resource, each of us only has so much self-control, when we engage in one act of self-control, it uses up our resources (we have less to continue)

Question 21

what analogy did early research use about ego depletion

Answer 21

muscle analogy

Question 22

what is the muscle analogy

Answer 22

when you exercise a muscle one time, it fatigues that muscle and makes it harder to use that muscle afterwards

if you practice self control every day you will build this self control muscle, it wont be as hard to engage in self control in the future. there is evidence that people who practice self control regularly, you get better at it
-might be a finite resource but if you build it you can go further

Question 23

browns example of muscle analogy

Answer 23

Brown’s drum playing wears out arm muscles and struggles picking up cat because of her muscles being sore, but muscles can be built up, the more she does the drums the better her muscles will be in the future

if you exercise everyday it will not be as painful to exert the same amount of energy

Question 24

how can self control differ per person

Answer 24

not everything requires the same amount of self-control per person. people differ in what they enjoy and what they consider an act of self-control. (some people like exercise)
-if you are not big on shopping, it is not a big deal to see something you like and not buy it

Question 25

what are the implications of the original theory of ego depletion and muscle analogy

Answer 25

how we structure our day matters. if we know we are going to be doing something difficult we should be careful about what we do before it so we do not have to exert so much self-control (obama example)

Question 26

how are torture and interrogations like ego depletion

Answer 26

wear someone down, and get them to give up information

Question 27

what is the general progression of what self control is/why it occurs

Answer 27

1) energy model
2) sugar studies
3) belief studies
4) prime beliefs
5) culture studies

Question 28

what is the energy model of self control

Answer 28

self control is actual physical energy, relies on blood glucose/carbohydrate metabolism. level of glucose in blood is what allows us to engage in self control

Question 29

how did the energy model of self control come about

Answer 29

came about inadvertently, had people drinking gross milkshakes or tasty milkshakes and everyone engaged in same amount of self control (so is it something about the sugar in milkshake?)

early studies found that self control was related to current blood glucose by drawing blood samples, but it was never replicated, so not valid

Question 30

what was the sugar splenda study about self control

Answer 30

had participants watch the video with the words and the placebo group (splenda) showed ego depletion, did worse on a stroop task (read word, not color)

2x2 (type of drink x controlling if they can focus on the words in the video or not)

results: ego depletion was eliminated with those who drank regular sugar, so far suggesting something with ego depletion is physical

Question 31

meaning of sugar splenda study

Answer 31

found that lemonade with sugar eliminated ego depletion, but not lemonade with splenda. splenda showed classic ego depletion, these studies did replicate, but if you draw a blood sample glucose levels did not relate to self control performance
-this is odd because the only difference between sugar and splenda is sugar has glucose, suggests there is something going on with ego depletion could be physical in some way

Question 32

what is “energy or is it all in our heads” next step of self control research

Answer 32

a paper came out that found some evidence that ego depletion is just a phenomenon in our heads (no physical reasons), beliefs about self control as a limited resource moderate depletion effects

Question 33

what is the “energy or is it all in our heads” study

Answer 33

measured people’s beliefs about whether self-control is a limited resource, self report about self control
-had participants do the “e” manipulation (control and depletion, exactly the same as other study)

dependent measure: number of errors they made on stroop task
-looked at groups based on answers to survey in the beginning

results: people who believe self control is a limited resource made more mistakes, ego depletion
people who do not believe self control is a limited resource showed no difference between the two groups

suggests it cannot be something physical if some people are not showing it. their own beliefs influence whether or not they show ego depletion, their own beliefs are a moderator

Question 34

what happened in the study about participants being primed of self control

Answer 34

primed self control as a limited or unlimited resource
survey about beliefs
conditions:
1) after you do a difficult mental task, you need a break (easy to agree with, belief in a limited resource)
2) doing strong mental tasks makes you energized to do more (also easy to agree with, belief in unlimited resource)

dependent measure was errors on stroop task

results:
people primed to think that ego depletion exists, these people showed ego depletion, showed less control after first tasks, more mistakes on stroop
people primed to think the opposite, found the opposite. put in ego depletion situation, did better when they were more depleted (less mistakes on stroop, doing something hard energizes you to do something else hard)

Question 35

what were the cross cultural studies surrounding self control

Answer 35

cultures about persisting and going once you get started also show no evidence of ego depletion

Question 36

so contradicting results about self control and ego depletion?

Answer 36

-sugar v. splenda can affect ego depletion, but changing what people believe can prevent ego depletion?

is it our mindset or more physical?

Question 37

what are carbohydrate rinses

Answer 37

• swish around gatorade and spit it out (athlete does not want to digest it because it sits in stomach)
• established that this works but artificial sweeteners (non carb) do not improve performance

Question 38

what are the physiological explanations for carb rines

Answer 38

activate dopamine pathways in the striatum (reward)

• when people would taste real sugar, this activated reward systems in their brain but non sugar beverages will not activate these pathways (even if taken unconsciously)
• tasting sugar influences our brain

Question 39

so what is reward related to?

Answer 39

maybe it is conditioning, maybe it is our reward system being activated and reinforcing our behavior

motivational or metabolic?

Question 40

what is the Molden study about carbon rinses

Answer 40

participants had to do a handgrip task, quite challenging (baseline performance, how strong their grip is normally)

• did the “e” manipulation
• did hand grip task again (did pre and post to see if it got worse)- within subjects, everyone did the hand grip task first and second to see if their score got worse or better

another between groups condition
swished a beverage around their mouth (real or fake sugar) after the ego depletion activity, did not swallow so no way it could have affected their blood sugar

results: when they swished a beverage with no real sugar in it, evidence of ego depletion (hand grip task was better before than after)
when people swished a sugary drink, ego depletion decreased

Question 41

what does the Molden study about carbon rinses show us

Answer 41

Evidence ego depletion is fairly motivational. Sugar is rewarding, increases our general motivation, brain can be influenced.

Ego depletion can occur, but if you motivate someone in general then you can erase it

Question 42

so what is current knowledge about ego depletion

Answer 42

know glucose level does not matter, some evidence that what is going on in mind matters (if we think we need a break after difficult task, we in fact struggle to do something else mentally difficult), sugar rinse is motivational and erases ego depletion

Question 43

what is the study about dogs and ego depletion

Answer 43

Study: Had them trained to sit and stay, also trained to know what a Kong ball is and that it gave them treats

Control condition - weren’t allowed to go anywhere, but didn’t involve self-control - in a cage for ten minutes
Depletion condition - told to sit and stay and owner left room. If the dog would get up, the owner could come back in, to the point where they would sit and stay for 10 minutes. Fighting the impulse to get up and be a dog

All the dogs were given a Kong ball that it was impossible to get the treat out from the inside.
Recorded how long the dogs persisted.

results: The dogs that had to sit and stay, self control, persisted less on difficult task.

Added another IV - whether or not they drank real (glucose) or fake sugar (fructose).

• Dogs who exerted self-control (sit and stay) persisted less (with a complex treat toy), unless they consumed a glucose drink
• Real sugar eliminated ego depletion, glucose
• Dogs show ego depletion, sugar eliminated ego depletion

Question 44

what is the dog follow up study

Answer 44

-Same methods of depletion (sit and stay)
-Dogs taken into a new room where there was another dog who was growling or scratching in a cage, looked at if the test dog (depleted or not) approached the other dog in an aggressive behavior.
(Not doing risky behavior involves self-control)

results: Dogs who were depleted were more likely to do this risky thing, dogs who exerted self-control were more aggressive toward a growling and unfamiliar dog

Question 45

so what is the conclusion about ego depletion

Answer 45

ego depletion is a reliable effect and a real phenomenon that some people experience

Question 46

what does ego depletion depend on

Answer 46

why it occurs for certain people is more debatable (some evidence for motivation, does not depend on glucose levels)

depends on: personality, culture and mindset

Question 47

what is the first theory for why ego depletion is not consistent in the lab

Answer 47

these studies do not totally deplete people (like torture or sleep deprivation) they still have enough left over, if they are motivated enough to engage in self-control, they will engage in self-control, true depletion exists but not in the lab

• but maybe an absence of motivation it would be adaptive to conserve resource than keep expending it
• maybe its better to conserve our energy unless we feel enough motivation

Question 48

what is the second theory (brain) for why ego depletion is inconsistent

Answer 48

psychological phenomenon, if something is fatiguing you physically or mentally it makes the brain have a cue “maybe i should scale back, it is not worth it to continue)

• is what im doing worth it?
• adaptive for the brain to stop and assess, and if it assesses it is not worth it than it scales back and says its not worth it to continue
• but if you can boost motivation (it is worth it to continue, or increase in dopamine) ego depletion does not exist

Question 49

what are some other arguments for ego depletion

Answer 49

some people argue that the vagus nerve (energy homeostasis, remaining balanced) may be involved

Question 50

what matters whether or not ego depletion occurs

Answer 50

motivation and beliefs about self control

-cannot be a purely physical thing