Is Addiction a Choice?
Jenny Svanberg in The Psychology of Addiction, 2018
Another theory is that conscious suppression depletes willpower, known as ‘ego depletion’ or ‘ego fatigue’, essentially that the more you try and push away urges and impulses, the more your willpower drains away, until giving in just feels inevitable (Baumeister et al., 1998). Attempts at conscious suppression just weaken self-control. Essentially, ‘just say no’ doesn’t work, once the process of incentive sensitisation is harnessing your attention and directing your actions. The ‘quick and dirty’ impulsive processes capture attention and direct it towards rewarding cues, triggering behaviour while the slower, more reflective processes are still catching up. Once this process has been enacted, it is harder for conscious demands – ‘Stop!… don’t do it!’ – to control the behaviour. Marc Lewis points out that shifting perspective and reframing your emotional state avoids this depletion of self-control: “Instead of tying yourself to the mast in order to resist the Sirens’ song, you must recognise the Sirens as harbingers of death and reframe their songs as background noise” (2015, p. 185).
Libertarian paternalism, nudging, and public policy
Kalle Grill, Jason Hanna in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Paternalism, 2018
Questions have also been raised about the replicability (and thus robustness) of some research findings from behavioral psychology. It is undergoing a so-called “replicability crisis.” An example of this are experiments on ego depletion. There are many variations, but the original involved putting a plate of chocolate chip cookies as well as a bowl of radishes beside student test subjects. They were then instructed to eat only the cookies or radishes. Afterwards they were asked to solve a puzzle. Those who ate the cookies persevered in trying to solve it for much longer than those who ate radishes. This led to theorizing that willpower is limited and can be depleted (by resisting eating cookies) (Baumeister et al. 1998). The effect was then found in many other studies. However, a recent large-scale replicability project involving 2000 subjects concluded that “if there is any effect, it is close to zero” (Hagger et al. 2016: 558). In this vein, the Open Science Collaboration tried to replicate 100 studies which had previously been published in psychology journals. They found that the replicability of these was around 47% (OSC 2015) and that a “large portion of replications produced weaker evidence for the original findings despite using materials provided by the original authors” (943). Remarkably, the results of the OSC study itself have been challenged, with claims that the OSC data do not support their own conclusions (Gilbert et al. 2016).
Glossary
Pat Croskerry, Karen S. Cosby, Mark L. Graber, Hardeep Singh in Diagnosis, 2017
ego depletion: a form of exhaustion in which an individual may compromise their decisions to save energy. In cognition, it may explain resorting to heuristics and short-cuts that an individual might not otherwise use.
Effect of Ego Depletion on Interpersonal Trust among Individuals with Substance Use Disorders
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2020
Two dominant models favor the existence of this ego depletion effect. The first model is the strength model of self-control, which suggests that the capacity for self-regulation resembles a limited energy or resource, which is consumed during the process of exerting self-control (Baumeister and Vohs 2018; Baumeister, Vohs, and Tice 2007). Thus, ego depletion is regarded as a temporary state where the executive function is impaired and which is caused by the use of self-regulating resources during previous tasks. After expending energy and thus becoming ego depleted, people are less willing (or able) to exert further self-control. The second model is the process model of self-control, which suggests that the ego depletion effect is caused by a temporary mental shift rather than the depletion of resources (Inzlicht and Schmeichel 2012). Thus, when people engage in two consecutive tasks, their motivation is assumed to shift from suppressing and inhibiting desires toward approaching and gratifying them. This, in turn, shifts their attention from cues signaling the need to exert control toward cues signaling gratification.
Examinations of change in inhibitory and initiatory Self-Control in the context of endurance running
Published in Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 2022
Jennifer Shubert, Benjamin Houltberg, Juliette Ratchford, Sarah Schnitker
Documenting within-person change in self-control and its predictors offer important implications for theory. Although ego-depletion is typically characterized as a temporary state, results from the current study inform theory by providing evidence that some types of trait self-control display depletion effects that persist across time and activity context—articulating when and which aspects of self-control are likely to be depleted offers a step forward for theory. Moreover, results highlight the role of motivational constructs in buffering against depletion effects. Future research may benefit from an in-depth examination of how integrating goals, such as marathon participation, into a sense of self allows individuals to override desires that are incongruent with higher-order goals.
Machine, Machine! Stories about How Border Breaking Experiences from a Combat Fatique Course Relates to the Development of Willpower and the Educational Concept of Bildung
Published in Military Behavioral Health, 2021
Leaders with a high degree of self-control make better decisions in stressful situations than those with low self-control because leaders with high self-control become less ego-depleted. Ego depletion means that one's self-control or one's willpower draws from a limited pool of mental resources. The point is that they can or will be used until there is nothing left. It has been suggested that making decisions is ego depleting, because it requires many of a person’s resources. Individuals who have high self-control may therefore have a larger reservoir of willpower, and this translates into less ego depletion than those with less willpower (Samuels et al., 2010).
Related Knowledge Centers
- Electroencephalography
- Heart Rate Variability
- Neurophysiology
- Prosocial Behavior
- Self-Control
- Id, Ego & Super-Ego
- Egotism
- Social Psychology
- Error-Related Negativity
- Guilt