Flipping the Self-Control Switch: A Novel Within-Subject Paradigm to Test the Effects of Ego Depletion

• Main Author: Francis, Zoe
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Subjects: psychology, cognitive; psychology, experimental; psychology, personality
• ISBN: 9781321455069; 1321455062

In response to concerns of ego depletion replicability, we have developed a within-subject, repeated-measures paradigm to complement the traditional between-subject design. Across five studies, we examine two previously established dependent variables (the cognitive estimation task (CET) and the flanker task) and one novel variable (anchoring effect). The experiments use 8 to 22 blocks of alternating depleting and rejuvenating manipulations, with each block followed by a self-control measurement. Participants consistently report having less energy on depleting blocks compared to rejuvenating blocks, confirming the subjective effectiveness of brief depletion manipulations. We replicate previous findings showing that participants perform poorer on the CET and make more errors on incongruent trials in the flanker task when depleted. Furthermore, we find that depleted participants show a weaker anchoring effect, consistent with literature showing that the anchoring effect is paradoxically reliant on cognitive effort. We conclude that ego depletion can be studied using statistically powerful within-subject designs.