Junhua Dang

Commentary : A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect

The ego depletion effect has not been replicated by a recent project including 23 laboratories (N = 2141) in both English-speaking countries and non-English speaking countries (Hagger and Chatzisarantis, 2016). Although it provides seemingly robust evidence casting doubt on the existence of ego depletion, cautious attention should be paid to the effectiveness of the depleting task (i.e., e-crossing task) used in the replicating project.

An updated meta-analysis of the ego depletion effect

The ego depletion effect is one of the most famous phenomena in social psychology. A recent meta-analysis showed that after accounting for small-studies effects by using a newly developed method called PET-PEESE, the ego depletion effect was indistinguishable from zero. However, it is too early to draw such rushing conclusion because of the inappropriate usage of PET-PEESE. The current paper reported a stricter and updated meta-analysis of ego depletion by carefully inspecting problems in the previous meta-analysis, including new studies not covered by it, and testing the effectiveness of each depleting task. The results suggest that attention video should be an ineffective depleting task, whereas emotion video should be the most effective one. Future studies are needed to confirm the effectiveness of each depletion task revealed by the current meta-analysis.

The ego could be depleted, providing initial exertion is depleting : A preregistered experiment of the ego depletion effect

The ego depletion effect has been examined by over 300 independent studies during the past two decades. Despite its pervasive influence, recently this effect has been severely challenged and asserted to be a fake. Based on an up-to-date meta-analysis that examined the effectiveness of each frequently used depleting task, we preregistered the current experiment with the aim to examine whether there would be an ego depletion effect when the Stroop task is used as the depleting task. The results demonstrated a significant ego depletion effect. The current research highlights the importance of the depleting task’s effectiveness. That is to say, the “ego” could be “depleted,” but only when initial exertion is “depleting.”

When the poor excel: Poverty facilitates procedural learning

Recent research has shown that poverty directly impeded cognitive functions because the poor could be easily distracted by monetary concerns. We argue that this effect may be limited to functions relying on working memory. For functions that rely on proceduralized processes however, monetary concerns elicited by reminding of financial demands would be conducive rather than harmful. Our results supported this hypothesis by showing that participants with lower income reached the learning criterion of the information-integration categorization task faster than their more affluent counterparts after reminding of financial demands.

A New Account of the Conditioning Bias to Out-Groups

Funding. This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program 2015CB351800).

Escalate shamefully, de-escalate angrily or gratefully: The influence of discrete emotions on escalation of commitment.

Decision makers often tend to escalate their commitment when faced with a dilemma of whether to continue a losing course of action. Researchers recently began to investigate the influence of discrete emotions on this decision tendency. However, this work has mainly focused on negative emotions and rarely considered positive emotions, to say nothing of comparing the effects of both of them simultaneously. The current study addresses this need by presenting the results of three experiments that examined the effects of four emotions of both positive and negative valences in escalation situations. Experiment 1 investigated the relationships of three trait emotions (hope, shame, and anger) and escalation of commitment. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the effects of three induced emotions (anger, shame, and gratitude) on escalation of commitment in a student sample and an employee sample, respectively. The results revealed that the effects of discrete emotions in escalation situations are mainly due to their associated differences on the appraisal dimension of responsibility that is related to escalation situations rather than their valence. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Further Support for the Motivational Explanation of Self-Other Similarity Judgment Asymmetry

Self-other similarity judgment asymmetry refers to the tendency of people to judge others to be more similar to themselves than they judge themselves to be similar to others. This effect can be explained with both a cognitive model (Tversky, 1977) and a motivational explanation (Codol, 1987). Recent research has provided initial evidence for the core assumption of the motivational explanation and tested a hypothesis that can only be derived from the motivational explanation. The present study aims to provide further evidence for the motivational explanation by testing another hypothesis derived from it that goes beyond the cognitive model. Our results show that participants with a strong need for uniqueness tended to exhibit self-other asymmetry, but only with respect to attributes that were difficult to falsify.

Is there an alternative explanation to the evolutionary account for financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive individuals

All three critical points of the evolutionary explanation proposed by Maestripieri et al. may not withstand close scrutiny. Instead, there should be an alternative explanation that has nothing to do with genetic continuity, but stresses the rewarding property of attractiveness that results mainly from sociocultural value assignment and sexual experience pursuit.