Dianne M. Tice

Ego depletion : Is the active self a limited resource ?

Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource. In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eating. In Experiment 2, making a meaningful personal choice to perform attitude-relevant behavior caused a similar decrement in persistence. In Experiment 3, suppressing emotion led to a subsequent drop in performance of solvable anagrams. In Experiment 4, an initial task requiring high self-regulation made people more passive (i.e., more prone to favor the passive-response option). These results suggest that the selfs capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource.

Self-control as limited resource: regulatory depletion patterns.

If self-regulation conforms to an energy or strength model, then self-control should be impaired by prior exertion. In Study 1, trying to regulate ones emotional response to an upsetting movie was followed by a decrease in physical stamina. In Study 2, suppressing forbidden thoughts led to a subsequent tendency to give up quickly on unsolvable anagrams. In Study 3, suppressing thoughts impaired subsequent efforts to control the expression of amusement and enjoyment. In Study 4, autobiographical accounts of successful versus failed emotional control linked prior regulatory demands and fatigue to self-regulatory failure. A strength model of self-regulation fits the data better than activation, priming, skill, or constant capacity models of self-regulation.

The Strength Model of Self-Control:

Self-control is a central function of the self and an important key to success in life. The exertion of self-control appears to depend on a limited resource. Just as a muscle gets tired from exertion, acts of self-control cause short-term impairments (ego depletion) in subsequent self-control, even on unrelated tasks. Research has supported the strength model in the domains of eating, drinking, spending, sexuality, intelligent thought, making choices, and interpersonal behavior. Motivational or framing factors can temporarily block the deleterious effects of being in a state of ego depletion. Blood glucose is an important component of the energy.

Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor.

The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels, thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control.

If You Can't Join Them, Beat Them: Effects of Social Exclusion on Aggressive Behavior

Social exclusion was manipulated by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. These manipulations caused participants to behave more aggressively. Excluded people issued a more negative job evaluation against someone who insulted them (Experiments 1 and 2). Excluded people also blasted a target with higher levels of aversive noise both when the target had insulted them (Experiment 4) and when the target was a neutral person and no interaction had occurred (Experiment 5). However, excluded people were not more aggressive toward someone who issued praise (Experiment 3). These responses were specific to social exclusion (as opposed to other misfortunes) and were not mediated by emotion.

Longitudinal Improvement of Self-Regulation Through Practice: Building Self-Control Strength Through Repeated Exercise

This study examined the results of repeated exercises of self-control in relation to self-regulatory strength over time. A sample of 69 U.S. college students spent 2 weeks doing 1 of 3 self-control exercises: monitoring and improving posture, regulating mood, or monitoring and recording eating. Compared with a no-exercise control group, the participants who performed the self-control exercises showed significant improvement in self-regulatory capacity as measured by quitting faster on a hand-grip exercise task following a thought-suppression exercise.

When ego threats lead to self-regulation failure: Negative consequences of high self-esteem.

The tendency for people with high self-esteem to make inflated assessments and predictions about themselves carries the risk of making commitments that exceed capabilities, thus leading to failure. Ss chose their performance contingencies in a framework where larger rewards were linked to a greater risk of failure. In the absence of ego threat, Ss with high self-esteem showed superior self-regulation: They set appropriate goals and performed effectively. Ego threat, however, caused Ss with high self-esteem to set inappropriate, risky goals that were beyond their performance capabilities so they ended up with smaller rewards than Ss with low self-esteem. The results indicate the danger of letting egotistical illusions interfere with self-regulation processes.

Giving in to Feel Good: The Place of Emotion Regulation in the Context of General Self-Control

Understanding how emotion regulation is similar to and different from other self-control tasks can advance the understanding of emotion regulation. Emotion regulation has many similarities to other regulatory tasks such as dieting, and abstaining from smoking, drugs, alcohol, ill-advised sexual encounters, gambling, and procrastination, but it differs in a few important respects. Emotion regulation is similar to other kinds of self-regulation in that it consists of three components: standards, monitoring, and strength. Emotion regulation involves overriding one set responses with another, incompatible set, just like with other types of self-control. And like other regulatory tasks, emotion regulation can fail either because of underregulation or because of misregulation. Although emotion regulation is similar in many respects to other regulatory tasks, it is a special case of self-regulation in that it can often undermine attempts at other kinds of self- control. Specifically, focusing on regulating moods and feeling states can lead to a failure of self-control in other areas.

Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain Behavioral and Neural Evidence

Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain—physical and social—may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central (rather than peripheral) neural mechanisms, may also reduce behavioral and neural responses to social rejection. In two experiments, participants took acetaminophen or placebo daily for 3 weeks. Doses of acetaminophen reduced reports of social pain on a daily basis (Experiment 1). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure participants’ brain activity (Experiment 2), and found that acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions previously associated with distress caused by social pain and the affective component of physical pain (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula). Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain.

Self-Concept Change and Self-Presentation: The Looking Glass Self Is Also a Magnifying Glass

Studies 1 and 2 showed that identical behaviors had greater impact on the self-concept when performed publicly rather than privately. That is, the self-concept is more likely to change by internalizing public behavior than by internalizing behavior that is identical but lacks the interpersonal context. The self-concept change extends even to behavioral changes and occurs even when participants are unaware of being observed. In addition, those who are high in self-monitoring are more likely to internalize their behavior than those who are low in self-monitoring. Study 3 provided evidence about what components of a public situation affect the internalization of behavior. Choice about making the self-portrayal, drawing on episodes from ones own past rather than relying on a yoked script, and expecting future interaction with the audience all increased the internalization of a public behavior.