Ego Depletion,Is It All in Your Head?
Job, Dweck and Walton proposed that ego depletion depends on what a person believes about willpower. Across four studies they reported that individual differences in lay theories moderated the effect: people who viewed the capacity for self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting experience, an effect they replicated by manipulating the belief rather than measuring it, and extended in a longitudinal field study to eating behaviour, procrastination and self-regulated goal striving under demanding conditions. Their conclusion was that reduced self-control after a depleting task may reflect beliefs about the availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion. This vault records the paper as the best known alternative account of ego depletion and as one that has since failed replication: Carruth, Ramos and Miyake (2023) found neither the depletion effect nor its moderation by mindset.
Job, Dweck and Walton proposed that ego depletion depends on what a person believes about willpower. Across four studies they reported that individual differences in lay theories moderated the effect: people who viewed the capacity for self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting experience, an effect they replicated by manipulating the belief rather than measuring it, and extended in a longitudinal field study to eating behaviour, procrastination and self-regulated goal striving under demanding conditions. Their conclusion was that reduced self-control after a depleting task may reflect beliefs about the availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion. This vault records the paper as the best known alternative account of ego depletion and as one that has since failed replication: Carruth, Ramos and Miyake (2023) found neither the depletion effect nor its moderation by mindset.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Job, V., Dweck, C. S. & Walton, G. M. (2010). “Ego depletion, is it all in your head? Implicit theories about willpower affect self-regulation.” Psychological Science, 21(11), 1686-1693.
Where we use it
- Willpower Is Not a Fuel Tank, 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/10.1177/0956797610384745
DOI: 10.1177/0956797610384745