Ego Depletion Reduces Attention Control: Evidence From Two High-Powered Preregistered Experiments

• Published in: Personality & social psychology bulletin Vol. 45; no. 5; pp. 728 - 739
• Main Authors: Garrison, Katie E., Finley, Anna J., Schmeichel, Brandon J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-05-2019; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Adolescent; Attention; Depletion; Ego; Experiments; Female; Humans; Male; Meta-analysis; Random Allocation; Reaction time; Self control; Stroop task; Stroop Test; Systematic review; Writing; Young Adult; self-control; attention control; preregistration; ego depletion
• ISSN: 0146-1672; 1552-7433
• DOI: 10.1177/0146167218796473

Two preregistered experiments with more than 1,000 participants in total found evidence of an ego depletion effect on attention control. Participants who exercised self-control on a writing task went on to make more errors on Stroop tasks (Experiment 1) and the Attention Network Test (Experiment 2) compared with participants who did not exercise self-control on the initial writing task. The depletion effect on response times was nonsignificant. A mini meta-analysis of the two experiments found a small (d = 0.20) but significant increase in error rates in the controlled writing condition, thereby providing evidence of poorer attention control under ego depletion. These results, which emerged from preregistered experiments in large samples of participants, represent some of the most rigorous evidence yet of the ego depletion effect.