Veronika Job

Ego depletion--is it all in your head? implicit theories about willpower affect self-regulation.

Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion. We propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a person’s belief about whether willpower is a limited resource. Study 1 found that individual differences in lay theories about willpower moderate ego-depletion effects: People who viewed the capacity for self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting experience. Study 2 replicated the effect, manipulating lay theories about willpower. Study 3 addressed questions about the mechanism underlying the effect. Study 4, a longitudinal field study, found that theories about willpower predict change in eating behavior, procrastination, and self-regulated goal striving in depleting circumstances. Taken together, the findings suggest that reduced self-control after a depleting task or during demanding periods may reflect people’s beliefs about the availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion.

Beliefs about willpower determine the impact of glucose on self-control

Significance The present research provides critical new findings about the role of glucose ingestion in self-control and cognitive performance. It argues against the popular view that self-control depends on a limited physiological resource (blood glucose) that is depleted by even brief acts of self-control and is restored by glucose consumption. Instead, the results highlight the critical role of beliefs about willpower in self-control performance. Past research found that the ingestion of glucose can enhance self-control. It has been widely assumed that basic physiological processes underlie this effect. We hypothesized that the effect of glucose also depends on people’s theories about willpower. Three experiments, both measuring (experiment 1) and manipulating (experiments 2 and 3) theories about willpower, showed that, following a demanding task, only people who view willpower as limited and easily depleted (a limited resource theory) exhibited improved self-control after sugar consumption. In contrast, people who view willpower as plentiful (a nonlimited resource theory) showed no benefits from glucose—they exhibited high levels of self-control performance with or without sugar boosts. Additionally, creating beliefs about glucose ingestion (experiment 3) did not have the same effect as ingesting glucose for those with a limited resource theory. We suggest that the belief that willpower is limited sensitizes people to cues about their available resources including physiological cues, making them dependent on glucose boosts for high self-control performance.

Get a Taste of Your Goals: Promoting Motive–Goal Congruence Through Affect-Focus Goal Fantasy

Studies show that motive-goal congruence is an important predictor of well-being (Baumann, Kaschel, & Kuhl, 2005; Brunstein, Schultheiss, & Grässmann, 1998). However, little is known about the factors that promote congruence between implicit motives and goals. Relying on McClellands (1985) concept of implicit motives and the theory of fantasy realization (Oettingen, 1999), we postulated that goal fantasies focusing on motive-specific affective incentives promote motive-congruent goal setting. This hypothesis was tested in 3 experimental studies. In Study 1 (n=46) and Study 2 (n=48), participants were asked to select goals in a hypothetical scenario. In Study 3 (n=179), they rated their commitment to personal goals for their actual life situation. The results of all 3 studies supported our hypothesis that participants who focus on motive-specific affective incentives in their goal fantasies set their goals in line with their corresponding implicit motive dispositions.

Theories of Willpower Affect Sustained Learning

Building cognitive abilities often requires sustained engagement with effortful tasks. We demonstrate that beliefs about willpower–whether willpower is viewed as a limited or non-limited resource–impact sustained learning on a strenuous mental task. As predicted, beliefs about willpower did not affect accuracy or improvement during the initial phases of learning; however, participants who were led to view willpower as non-limited showed greater sustained learning over the full duration of the task. These findings highlight the interactive nature of motivational and cognitive processes: motivational factors can substantially affect people’s ability to recruit their cognitive resources to sustain learning over time.

Effects of Achievement Goal Striving on Well-Being: The Moderating Role of the Explicit Achievement Motive

This research is based on the theoretical conception of motives and goals as distinct motivational concepts. Previous research has demonstrated that discrepancies between implicit motives and goals have negative consequences for well-being. The authors have extended these findings to the explicit motive system, with four studies investigating the moderating role of the explicit achievement motive on the relationship between achievement goal striving and well-being. In line with their expectations, achievement goal striving was accompanied by high positive affect (Studies 1 and 2) and a high number of positive affective experiences (Study 3) only when the explicit achievement motive was high. Longitudinal Study 4 showed that the interaction between the explicit achievement motive and achievement goal commitment predicts changes in subjective well-being and health measured over a 3-month period.

Discrepancies Between Implicit and Explicit Motivation and Unhealthy Eating Behavior

Many people change their eating behavior as a consequence of stress. One source of stress is intrapersonal psychological conflict as caused by discrepancies between implicit and explicit motives. In the present research, we examined whether eating behavior is related to this form of stress. Study 1 (N=53), a quasi-experimental study in the lab, showed that the interaction between the implicit achievement motive disposition and explicit commitment toward an achievement task significantly predicts the number of snacks consumed in a consecutive taste test. In cross-sectional Study 2 (N=100), with a sample of middle-aged women, overall motive discrepancy was significantly related to diverse indices of unsettled eating. Regression analyses revealed interaction effects specifically for power and achievement motivation and not for affiliation. Emotional distress further partially mediated the relationship between the overall motive discrepancy and eating behavior.

Does self-control training improve self-control? A meta-analysis

Self-control is positively associated with a host of beneficial outcomes. Therefore, psychological interventions that reliably improve self-control are of great societal value. A prominent idea suggests that training self-control by repeatedly overriding dominant responses should lead to broad improvements in self-control over time. Here, we conducted a random-effects meta-analysis based on robust variance estimation of the published and unpublished literature on self-control training effects. Results based on 33 studies and 158 effect sizes revealed a small-to-medium effect of g = 0.30, confidence interval (CI95) [0.17, 0.42]. Moderator analyses found that training effects tended to be larger for (a) self-control stamina rather than strength, (b) studies with inactive compared to active control groups, (c) males than females, and (d) when proponents of the strength model of self-control were (co)authors of a study. Bias-correction techniques suggested the presence of small-study effects and/or publication bias and arrived at smaller effect size estimates (range: gcorrected = .13 to .24). The mechanisms underlying the effect are poorly understood. There is not enough evidence to conclude that the repeated control of dominant responses is the critical element driving training effects.

Are Implicit Motives the Need to Feel Certain Affect? Motive–Affect Congruence Predicts Relationship Satisfaction

The authors test the assumption that the core of implicit motives is the desire for particular affective experiences and that motive satisfaction need not be tied to any particular domain. Using the context of romantic relationships, cross-sectional Study 1 and experimental Study 2 showed that people with a high affiliation motive were more satisfied when they experienced more affiliation-specific affect (calmness and relaxation). However, people with a higher power motive were more satisfied in their relationships when they experienced more power-specific affect (strength and excitement) in these relationships. The results support the idea that an implicit motive involves the desire for specific affective experiences and that frequent experiences of one’s preferred affect can lead to enhanced satisfaction and well-being in a domain, even one that is not typically associated with that motive.

Reverse ego-depletion:: Acts of self-control can improve subsequent performance in Indian cultural contexts.

The strength model of self-control has been predominantly tested with people from Western cultures. The present research asks whether the phenomenon of ego-depletion generalizes to a culture emphasizing the virtues of exerting mental self-control in everyday life. A pilot study found that whereas Americans tended to believe that exerting willpower on mental tasks is depleting, Indians tended to believe that exerting willpower is energizing. Using dual task ego-depletion paradigms, Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c found reverse ego-depletion among Indian participants, such that participants exhibited better mental self-control on a subsequent task after initially working on strenuous rather than nonstrenuous cognitive tasks. Studies 2 and 3 found that Westerners exhibited the ego-depletion effect whereas Indians exhibited the reverse ego-depletion effect on the same set of tasks. Study 4 documented the causal effect of lay beliefs about whether exerting willpower is depleting versus energizing on reverse ego-depletion with both Indian and Western participants. Together, these studies reveal the underlying basis of the ego-depletion phenomenon in culturally shaped lay theories about willpower.

Beliefs about willpower moderate the effect of previous day demands on next day's expectations and effective goal striving.

Research suggests that beliefs about willpower affect self-regulation following previous self-regulatory demands (Job et al., 2010). Some people believe that their willpower is limited, meaning that after a demanding task it needs to be replenished (limited theory). By contrast, others believe that willpower is not limited and that previous self-control tasks even activate willpower (non-limited theory). We hypothesized that when people experience a demanding day their beliefs about willpower predict their expected capacity to self-regulate and their actual self-regulation on the following day. In a daily diary study (N = 157), we measured students’ daily level of demands, their expected performance in unpleasant tasks, and their effective goal striving. Results showed that following a demanding day, students with a non-limited theory had higher expectations about their progress in unpleasant tasks and were striving more efficiently for their goals than students with a limited theory. These findings suggest that beliefs about willpower affect whether demands experienced on a previous day have positive or negative consequences on people’s self-regulation.