Roy F. Baumeister, “Self-regulation, Ego Depletion, and Inhibition.”
Neuropsychologia 65: 313–319, 2014.
• Note that most moral rules concern inhibitions, “do nots”; most emotion regulation is about controlling bad feelings. The average person in a country like the US spends 3 to 4 hours per day inhibiting.
• Regulation seems to depend on a limited resource, like energy, and it can be depleted; in some experiments depleted people perform worse on follow-up tasks that require perseverance.
• Ego depletion is the name given to being in a state where the ability to inhibit desires, to sustain willpower, is weakened. Depleted people, therefore, fail to inhibit behaviors that they otherwise would inhibit: aggression, inappropriate sexual responses, overeating, and impulsive spending, for instance.
• Nonetheless, ego depletion doesn’t mean that the fuel tank is empty; rather, it is more like the body makes an effort to conserve a depletable resource that is only somewhat compromised, as our bodies do with muscles. Ego depletion, therefore, can be overcome with directed effort.
• Making choices also depletes willpower, whereas exercising self-control harms subsequent decision-making.
• Despite some previous findings suggesting the contrary, it does not appear to be the case that ego depletion is equivalent to a fall in blood sugar. Nonetheless, low levels of blood sugar “predict poor self-regulation.” And, depleted people who get a hit of glucose then behave as if they are not depleted.
• The ability to inhibit is partly a trait (recall the marshmallow test) and partly a state. Fatigue is a marker of being in a depleted state. Depletion doesn’t create new feelings, but intensifies existing feelings, while making it harder to inhibit acting on those feelings.
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