Does willpower mindset really moderate the ego-depletion effect? A preregistered replication of Job, Dweck, and Walton
Carruth, Ramos and Miyake ran a preregistered replication of Job, Dweck and Walton's influential 2010 finding that ego depletion occurs only in people who believe willpower is a limited resource. The original study had sixty participants and its statistical evidence, as these authors put it, was on shaky ground, so the replication used 187 participants and some methodological improvements while keeping the design: a Stroop task following either a control or a depletion version of a letter cancellation task. Despite extensive analyses they failed to replicate. There was neither a significant main effect of ego depletion nor a significant moderation of that effect by willpower mindset. Taken with other recent failures to replicate the moderation, the authors conclude that the claim that a person's view of willpower affects their susceptibility to depletion is in doubt. This vault cites it as the paper that removes the last widely cited rescue of ego depletion.
Carruth, Ramos and Miyake ran a preregistered replication of Job, Dweck and Walton's influential 2010 finding that ego depletion occurs only in people who believe willpower is a limited resource. The original study had sixty participants and its statistical evidence, as these authors put it, was on shaky ground, so the replication used 187 participants and some methodological improvements while keeping the design: a Stroop task following either a control or a depletion version of a letter cancellation task. Despite extensive analyses they failed to replicate. There was neither a significant main effect of ego depletion nor a significant moderation of that effect by willpower mindset. Taken with other recent failures to replicate the moderation, the authors conclude that the claim that a person's view of willpower affects their susceptibility to depletion is in doubt. This vault cites it as the paper that removes the last widely cited rescue of ego depletion.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
(2010).' PLoS ONE, 18(6), e0287911. 187 participants; neither a significant main effect of depletion nor moderation by willpower mindset. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0287911
Where we use it
- The Psychology You Learned Didn't Replicate, Why We Act
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287911
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287911