Exploring Ego depletion

• A. Self-control is an unlimited resource that never runs out
• B. Self-control draws on a limited resource that can be temporarily reduced after exertion ✓
• C. Self-control improves permanently with every act of restraint
• D. Self-control is unrelated to mental energy or effort

Why: Ego depletion theory proposes that self-control relies on a limited pool of resource, so using it for one task can leave less available for later self-control tasks.

• A. The Stanford marshmallow test
• B. Baumeister and colleagues' 1998 radish-and-cookie experiment ✓
• C. Milgram's obedience experiments
• D. The Stroop color-word test study

Why: Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, and Tice (1998) had participants resist cookies or eat radishes, then gave them a persistence task on an unsolvable puzzle, finding that the resisters gave up sooner.

• A. Feeling more energetic after a long nap
• B. Being more likely to overeat or make impulsive purchases after a demanding day of resisting temptations ✓
• C. Remembering phone numbers more easily
• D. Sleeping better after exercise

Why: Ego depletion is often used to explain why people may give in to impulses, such as snacking or spending, after a long stretch of exerting self-control.

• A. Self-control is a skill that can only be learned in childhood
• B. Self-control works like a muscle that becomes fatigued with use ✓
• C. Self-control depends entirely on genetics and cannot change
• D. Self-control increases whenever a person feels happy

Why: The strength or muscle analogy is central to ego depletion theory: like a muscle, self-control is thought to tire with exertion and recover with rest.

• A. Reading a short news article
• B. Persisting on a difficult or unsolvable task, such as tracing a complex figure or solving an impossible puzzle ✓
• C. Listening to a piece of music
• D. Recalling a childhood memory

Why: Ego depletion studies typically measure a later self-control outcome, such as persistence on a frustrating or effortful task, to see whether prior exertion reduced it.

• A. Walter Mischel and Albert Bandura
• B. Roy Baumeister and colleagues ✓
• C. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
• D. Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth

Why: Roy Baumeister and his colleagues proposed in the late 1990s that self-control draws on a limited resource that can be depleted, a view often called the strength model of self-control.

• A. A battery that recharges overnight
• B. A muscle that becomes fatigued with use ✓
• C. A river that flows toward the sea
• D. A computer that runs out of memory

Why: The strength model likens self-control to a muscle: exerting it in one task leaves less capacity available for subsequent self-control demands, much as a muscle tires with repeated effort.

• A. A memory recall task with word lists
• B. A sequential task where participants first resist a temptation, such as eating radish instead of chocolate cookies, and then attempt a difficult persistence task ✓
• C. A reaction-time test measuring visual attention
• D. A survey measuring self-reported stress levels

Why: The landmark Baumeister et al. (1998) study had participants resist cookies or eat radishes, then tested persistence on an unsolvable puzzle. Those who had resisted temptation gave up sooner, interpreted as depleted self-control resources.

• A. Self-control is unlimited but easily distracted
• B. Self-control relies on a finite pool of energy or resources that is consumed by use and can be temporarily reduced ✓
• C. Self-control is entirely determined by genetics and cannot change
• D. Self-control only operates during sleep

Why: The model assumes a finite, shared resource underlying self-regulation. Using it for one act reduces what remains for later acts, producing a temporary state of depletion.

• A. It proves people never make rational decisions
• B. It suggests that prior acts of self-control can impair later self-regulation, which may help explain lapses in dieting, spending, or emotional control ✓
• C. It shows that willpower is unrelated to outcomes like health or academic success
• D. It demonstrates that only children experience self-control failures

Why: If earlier self-control efforts reduce later capacity, this could explain why people who resist one temptation may then overindulge or struggle with other demands, with implications for real-world self-regulation.

• A. To measure participants' baseline intelligence before the main study
• B. To exert self-control so that the researchers can later measure whether that effort reduces performance on a second self-control task ✓
• C. To familiarize participants with the lab equipment so they feel comfortable
• D. To randomly assign participants to a gender-balanced group

Why: The first task is meant to demand self-control, and the theory predicts that this exertion will deplete a limited resource, making performance worse on a subsequent self-control task. The second task is where the outcome is measured.

• A. Reaction time on a simple visual detection task
• B. Persistence on an unsolvable or very difficult puzzle, such as anagrams or geometric figure tracing ✓
• C. Self-reported mood on a 7-point scale
• D. Heart rate recorded during a rest period

Why: Persistence on unsolvable tasks (for example, the Stroop task or the impossible anagrams task) is a widely used behavioral index: participants who are depleted tend to give up sooner. Mood ratings and reaction times are not standard self-control measures in this paradigm.

• A. To make the study longer and more expensive
• B. To isolate the effect of exerting self-control from the effects of simply doing a tedious or effortful task ✓
• C. To ensure that all participants finish at the same time
• D. To eliminate the need for random assignment

Why: A control condition, such as eating radishes freely instead of resisting cookies, separates the effect of self-control exertion from general fatigue, boredom, or effort. This lets researchers attribute differences specifically to self-control demands.

• A. Telling participants their scores in real time to motivate them
• B. Having the experimenter who records persistence be blind to the participant's condition ✓
• C. Allowing participants to choose their own time limit
• D. Recording the session only if the participant asks

Why: If the experimenter knows which condition a participant was in, expectations could subtly influence how long they allow the participant to continue or how they judge persistence. Blinding the experimenter to condition is a standard safeguard against this bias.

• A. Participants always report too much self-control, making scores ceiling-limited
• B. Effect sizes have been difficult to replicate across labs, and motivation or task engagement can confound results ✓
• C. Lab measures cannot be scored numerically
• D. Ego depletion can only be studied using brain imaging

Why: Replication attempts of the ego depletion effect have yielded mixed and often smaller effects than the original studies, and factors such as motivation, task engagement, and participants' beliefs about willpower can confound measurement. Recognizing these issues is central to interpreting lab findings.

• A. Self-control draws on a limited resource that can be used up, leaving people less able to exert self-control afterward. ✓
• B. Self-control is an unlimited trait that never weakens with use.
• C. Willpower is determined entirely by genetics and cannot be changed by experience.
• D. People with high self-esteem are immune to temptation.

Why: Ego depletion theory proposes that self-control relies on a limited resource, so exerting self-control on one task can reduce performance on a later self-control task.

• A. The Stanford Prison Experiment, which examined the effects of assigned social roles.
• B. The Milgram obedience studies, which examined compliance with authority.
• C. The radish-and-cookie study, in which participants resisted cookies and then persisted less on an unsolvable puzzle. ✓
• D. The Bobo doll experiment, which examined imitation of aggression.

Why: Baumeister and colleagues' 1998 radish-and-cookie study found that participants who resisted eating cookies gave up sooner on a difficult puzzle than those who ate cookies, which was interpreted as depletion.

• A. A shortage of funding for replicating experiments in psychology.
• B. Many large, preregistered replication attempts of ego depletion effects found weak or no effects, casting doubt on the original findings. ✓
• C. Researchers being unable to publish any results about self-control.
• D. The discovery that ego depletion effects are stronger than originally reported.

Why: Large multi-lab replications, such as Hagger et al. (2016), found effect sizes near zero, which raised serious questions about the robustness of the ego depletion effect.

• A. Participants become motivationally or mentally fatigued, or they lose motivation to keep trying, rather than a resource running out. ✓
• B. Participants physically run out of glucose in their brains within minutes.
• C. Participants are always deliberately lying during self-control tasks.
• D. Self-control tasks have no effect on later behavior of any kind.

Why: Critics and researchers have proposed that changes in motivation, beliefs about willpower (such as the belief that willpower is limited), or fatigue-like states may explain performance drops, not a depleted resource.

• A. They guarantee that the results will support the original theory.
• B. They reduce the chance that flexible analysis choices and small samples produce false positives and inflated effect sizes. ✓
• C. They make experiments cheaper to run.
• D. They ensure participants cannot guess the hypothesis.

Why: Preregistration fixes hypotheses and analyses in advance, and large samples give more precise estimates, both of which help guard against publication bias and p-hacking that can inflate effects.

• A. Self-control is an unlimited resource that never runs out with practice.
• B. Self-control draws on a limited resource, so using it on one task can reduce performance on a later self-control task. ✓
• C. Willpower is determined entirely by genetic factors and cannot be changed.
• D. Making decisions improves a person's ability to resist temptation in every situation.

Why: Ego depletion theory holds that self-control relies on a limited pool of mental resources. Exerting self-control on one task is proposed to temporarily reduce the resources available for subsequent self-control tasks.

• A. A reaction-time test measuring how quickly participants pressed a button.
• B. A sequential task design in which one group resisted tempting foods (like radishes versus cookies) before attempting a difficult puzzle. ✓
• C. A memory test requiring participants to recall lists of random words.
• D. A survey measuring participants' daily sleep habits and stress levels.

Why: The well-known Baumeister et al. (1998) study had participants first resist cookies or eat radishes, then attempt an unsolvable puzzle. Those who had resisted temptation gave up sooner, which was interpreted as evidence of depletion.

• A. Researchers discovered that the original studies had used fabricated participant data in every case.
• B. Large multi-lab replication attempts, such as Hagger et al. (2016), found an effect size near zero, far smaller than originally reported. ✓
• C. The theory was shown to apply only to animals and never to humans.
• D. Critics proved that self-control tasks do not require any mental effort at all.

Why: A preregistered, multi-lab replication by Hagger and colleagues in 2016 found a negligible effect, casting serious doubt on the original magnitude of ego depletion. This was a central example in the broader replication crisis in psychology.

• A. It is the tendency for journals to publish only studies with statistically significant results, which can inflate apparent effect sizes. ✓
• B. It is the practice of publishing studies in multiple languages to reach wider audiences.
• C. It is the requirement that all published research include a financial disclosure.
• D. It is the idea that researchers should only publish results that confirm established theories.

Why: Publication bias favors positive, significant findings, so null results often remain unpublished in file drawers. In ego depletion research, this may have made the effect appear larger and more reliable than it truly is.

• A. The researchers register their hypotheses, methods, and analysis plan publicly before collecting data. ✓
• B. The participants must register with a government agency before joining the study.
• C. The study results are registered as a patent before publication.
• D. The journal reviews the study only after it has been widely cited by others.

Why: Preregistration commits researchers to a specified hypothesis and analysis plan before seeing the data. This reduces flexibility to chase significant results after the fact and is one of the key reforms prompted by the replication crisis.

• A. Self-control draws on a limited resource that can be temporarily reduced by prior acts of self-control. ✓
• B. Self-control is an unlimited trait that never declines regardless of how much effort is exerted.
• C. Self-control is determined entirely by genetics and cannot be influenced by situational factors.
• D. Self-control improves permanently after a single successful act of restraint.

Why: The ego depletion model holds that self-control relies on a limited internal resource, so exerting self-control on one task can leave less capacity for a subsequent self-control task.

• A. Oxygen levels in the prefrontal cortex
• B. Blood glucose, which fuels the brain's executive processes ✓
• C. Serotonin concentration in the amygdala
• D. Cortisol levels that rise during stressful tasks

Why: Gailliot and colleagues (2007) proposed that self-control draws on blood glucose, and that depletion reflects reduced glucose availability to the brain, which can be temporarily restored by consuming sugar.

• A. Sugar permanently increases intelligence and willpower.
• B. Restoring glucose may reverse the depletion effect, supporting a glucose mechanism. ✓
• C. Lemonade reduces motivation to complete tasks.
• D. Participants who drank lemonade were simply more relaxed and less anxious.

Why: Because the sugared drink restored performance on the subsequent self-control task, the result was interpreted as evidence that glucose replenishment can counteract ego depletion.

• A. Glucose levels were found to be impossible to measure in humans.
• B. Large replication attempts and studies using taste-only controls have produced inconsistent or null results. ✓
• C. Glucose was shown to increase self-control in every study ever conducted.
• D. Researchers discovered that ego depletion does not exist in any form.

Why: Replication efforts, including multi-lab studies, have failed to consistently reproduce the glucose effect, and some studies show that rinsing the mouth with sugar-containing solutions without swallowing can also influence performance, undermining a purely metabolic explanation.

• A. The resource depletion model, which says the brain runs out of oxygen
• B. The implicit theories account, where people who believe willpower is limited show stronger depletion effects ✓
• C. The bystander effect, where people fail to help in groups
• D. The availability heuristic, which biases judgments based on memory ease

Why: Research by Job, Dweck, and Walton showed that people who hold a limited-resource belief about willpower display greater depletion effects, suggesting that beliefs and motivation can shape the observed effect independently of any physical resource.

• A. Self-control draws on a limited resource that can be temporarily reduced by prior acts of self-control. ✓
• B. Self-control is an unlimited trait that never weakens with use.
• C. Willpower is determined entirely by genetics and cannot be changed.
• D. Self-control only matters when people are under direct observation by others.

Why: Ego depletion theory proposes that self-control relies on a limited pool of mental resources, so exerting self-control on one task can leave less capacity for a later task requiring self-control.

• A. They solved anagram puzzles more quickly than participants who ate cookies.
• B. They gave up sooner on an unsolvable puzzle than participants who ate cookies. ✓
• C. They reported higher levels of hunger than participants who ate cookies.
• D. They chose healthier snacks in a follow-up taste test.

Why: Participants forced to resist tempting cookies and eat radishes persisted for a shorter time on an unsolvable puzzle, which was interpreted as evidence of depleted self-control resources.

• A. Staying focused on a diet after a long day of resisting temptations at work. ✓
• B. Remembering a friend's birthday without writing it down.
• C. Feeling relaxed while listening to calm music.
• D. Sleeping soundly after a full night of rest.

Why: Ego depletion is commonly applied to situations where repeated acts of restraint, such as resisting food temptations or suppressing emotions during a demanding day, make later self-control harder.

• A. The effect was strongly confirmed across all labs with very large effect sizes.
• B. The effect was reliably found only in studies run by the original authors.
• C. Replications produced much smaller effects than the original studies, and the evidence became contested. ✓
• D. The effect was reversed, with self-control improving after exertion.

Why: Multi-lab replication attempts, including a large registered report in 2016, found effects substantially smaller than originally reported, leading many researchers to question the strength and reliability of ego depletion.

• A. Making important decisions when you are most mentally fatigued to build resilience.
• B. Planning ahead to reduce the number of self-control decisions you must make. ✓
• C. Increasing the number of tempting choices available throughout the day.
• D. Avoiding all breaks so that willpower does not fade during the day.

Why: Reducing the number of demanding choices, through habits, routines, and advance planning, limits how often you must rely on self-control, which can help preserve it for the decisions that matter most.