Friese, Loschelder, Gieseler, et al., "Is Ego Depletion Real?" (2018)

Malte Friese, David D. Loschelder, Karolin Gieseler, et al., “Is Ego Depletion Real? An Analysis of Arguments.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, published online, March 29, 2018. 

• The ego depletion hypothesis maintains that self-control is a construct that applies across (essentially?) all domains… 

• …and the exertion of self-control increases the chance of a failure of self-control in a subsequent (temporally proximate) task. 

• The standard experimental test for ego depletion is to conduct two consecutive self-control tasks. Ego depletion holds that folks who were induced to exert more control on the first task will show relatively low self-control on the second task. 

• The ego depletion literature frequently goes beyond the “depletion” being induced by self-control; any effortful behavior, including IKEA shopping, might lead to a depleted state and lessened self-control. 

• Some meta-analyses of the ego depletion literature conclude that the average effect might be zero; a preregistered large-scale replication of a previous ego depletion study also found a zero average effect. 

• Standard depletion-inducing exercises include variations on “e-crossing” and the Stroop test. Do these manipulations really work? 

• Journals traditionally have not been as interested in publishing null results than publishing articles that find statistically significant results. Researchers presumably respond to this situation by not bothering to write up and submit experiments that produce null results. Are the hundreds of published articles that find ego depletion matched or overmatched by countless unpublished studies that found no impaired self-control? 

• Another way that researchers might respond to the (perceived?) difficulty in publishing null results is to ensure that they do not get null results. One way to do that is to run many different empirical specifications (of a regression, say), but only report the “best” one. If you do this, the usual tests for statistical significance are meaningless. (See Shiny Apps p-hacker.)

• We don’t see many studies with reverse depletion effects, and if the truth were that the effect is null, we might(?) see as many negative as positive studies. 

• The unpublished studies might have to be legion to completely “offset” the many positive studies: that is, the truth might well be a positive effect (but of what size?) 

• Don’t we see evidence of ego depletion in everyday life? 

•  The solution lies in better science! Pre-register studies; increase sample sizes; use improved controls; report all results; collaborate with your intellectual opponents; develop theoretical understandings; check the quality of manipulations.

• Friese et al. suggest that the burden of proof on the existence of ego depletion is now on the proponents of the phenomenon.

Simonson and Kivetz (2018) on Gal and Rucker (2018) on Loss Aversion

Itamar Simonson and Ran Kivetz, "Bringing (Contingent) Loss Aversion Down to Earth — A Comment on Gal & Rucker’s Rejection of 'Losses Loom Larger Than Gains,'" Journal of Consumer Psychology 28(3): 517-522, July 2018.

• The articles outlined in the two previous posts are part of a "Research Dialogue"; Simonson and Kivetz's reply to Gal and Rucker, outlined here, is an element of the same dialogue.

• Gal and Rucker are right in that loss aversion is neither as firmly established nor as universal as is typically thought. Nonetheless, their retention paradigm is not convincing evidence of an endowment effect sans loss aversion, and they underplay some of the strongest evidence in favor of loss aversion: people demonstrate significant aversion to a risky but highly favorable (in expected value terms) bet, when opposed to a riskless gain (or the status quo) that offers much less in expected value. People routinely turn down 50-50 bets that pay $200 if heads and lose $100 if tails. 

• “[T]he question relevant at the present time for our field is not whether loss aversion occurs on average (we think it does), but what factors moderate its presence and magnitude, and relatedly, what are its boundaries [page 518]?” 

• Much of the evidence for the endowment effect (like the unwillingness to trade mugs for candy bars or vice versa) is consistent with plausible, non-loss-aversion explanations, such as the awkwardness in coming to an agreement for trivial trades. But the retention paradigm is not very convincing as new evidence against loss aversion, because of the highly artificial settings that arise in trying to reframe the retention of something you own as an active choice. 

• In many circumstances, loss aversion does seem to be part of what is going on with endowment effects, even if other mechanisms, such as transaction costs, also are at play. Losses do tend to loom larger than gains, but this is a tendency, one contingent on other factors, and not a universal truth. 

• As Gal and Rucker (2018) note, the excessive commitment to loss aversion might crowd out research that can identify other factors that drive decision making.

Higgins and Liberman (2018) Reply to Gal and Rucker (2018) on Loss Aversion

E. Tory Higgins and Nira Liberman, "The Loss of Loss Aversion: Paying Attention to Reference Points," Journal of Consumer Psychology 28(3): 523-532, July 2018.

• The Gal and Rucker loss aversion article outlined in the previous post was part of a "Research Dialogue"; Higgins and Liberman's reply, outlined here, is an element of the same dialogue.

• Higgins and Lieberman agree with Gal and Rucker: the empirical support for loss aversion is not as strong as its reputation would suggest. Loss aversion is not universal. The more general (than loss aversion) notion of prospect theory – that “reference points increase people’s sensitivity to objective changes in value [p. 523]” – is still viable, however.

• Losses and gains in prospect theory are judged relative to some reference point, which often is taken to be the status quo. If the reference point is not the status quo, however, then gains (relative to the status quo) need not be less powerful than losses, even if that loss-aversion-style result would be case were the status quo the relevant reference point. Further, multiple reference points can be at play at any one time.

• Reference points tend to be outcomes which attract our attention. As a result, we are more sensitive to changes around those points than from changes elsewhere. But this increased sensitivity need not be asymmetric, need not involve loss aversion: sensitivity to either gains or losses or both can increase around references points.

• A second suggestion is that a relevant reference point when judging an outcome is what might have happened instead, the chief counterfactual; gains or losses relative to that alternative will take on intensified value. To just make a train is more enjoyable than making it easily, and to just miss it is more painful than to be much too late. Again, this approach does not suggest the sort of asymmetry that loss aversion requires.

• Reference points such as goals – 10,000 steps per day – might suggest loss aversion: step 10,000 is worth a lot more than step 10,001 – but, Higgins and Lieberman argue, goals as reference points need not involve loss aversion. Many market-based goals have built-in incentives that are more sensitive above the goal – for instance, an increased percentage of royalties from book sales – than below the goal.

• In long-term pursuits, dual reference points can be at play: the starting position might be most salient early in the process, but the ultimate goal takes on more prominence as the pursuit unfolds. Recall that Gal and Rucker suggest that what is taken to be evidence of loss aversion in the literature often can be explained by an inaction bias, where no loss aversion is at play. For long-term pursuits, the “action” alternative is the one for which this dual reference point view seems most apt, and the additional reference point (the goal) can be the source of a greater sensitivity in valuation from changes in the action alternative than in the inaction alternative. 

• Some people (the “promotion-focused”) might concentrate on progress, and others (the “prevention-focused”) might concentrate on avoiding losses. Even if the status quo is the same for both individuals, they compare it with different alternative reference points. For the promotion-focused, the status quo is a loss relative to the desired progress; for the prevention-focused, the status quo is a gain relative to the feared worsening. 

• If a prevention-focused person found herself below the status quo, she might choose risky strategies if they are her only hope of restoring the status quo. Promotion-focused people, alternatively, starting from below the status quo, will not feel all that motivated to regain the status quo (both are losses, given the reference points at work), but will be more motivated to go from the status quo to a better point. This story, for which there is empirical support, is not consistent with standard prospect-theory-style loss aversion. That is, Gal and Rucker are right, in that the psychological evaluation of negative events (losses) are not always greater than the evaluation of equivalent gains, and people are not always more motivated by the threat of losses than by the prospect of gains. 

Gal and Rucker (2018) on the Loss of Loss Aversion

David Gal and Derek D. Rucker, “The Loss of Loss Aversion: Will It Loom Larger Than Its Gain?” Journal of Consumer Psychology 28(3): 497-516, July 2018.

• Social scientists seem to all but universally believe in loss aversion, the notion that losses “loom larger” psychologically than do similarly-sized gains.

• Gal and Rucker claim that the actual evidence does not support any general tendency for losses to loom larger than gains: everything depends upon the context.

• There’s a bit of circularity in the promotion of loss aversion: some phenomenon (like the equity premium puzzle or the endowment effect) is “explained” by loss aversion, and then the existence of the phenomenon (the equity premium, the endowment effect) is taken to be evidence that loss aversion is pervasive. 

• The status quo bias might reflect a preference towards inaction – and such a preference can exist in the absence of loss aversion, due to the lack of a motive for action, or economizing on processing costs, or the tendency to regret errors of commission more than errors of omission. 

• When asked to trade their original good for an essentially identical one, loss aversion is not implicated – but people still show a large status quo bias. Action v. inaction confounds the loss-gain story. 

• Is the endowment effect just a case of a status quo bias, and therefore does not require loss aversion? 

• The “retention paradigm” recasts endowment effect experiments as willingness-to-pay (WTP) to obtain an item v. WTP to retain an item – so now the “inaction” choice is not to have the good in both cases. (That is, the confounding of loss aversion with inaction is sidestepped.) 

• If loss aversion is active, then in the retention paradigm, the WTP to retain will be higher than the WTP to obtain. But in the experiments, there was no premium to retain a good or service. For “mundane” goods – mugs, notebooks – obtaining tended to have a higher WTP than retaining. 

• One has to be creative to come up with reasonable “retain” scenarios! Fixing a broken phone, perhaps? 

• Analogous experiments ask if you would like to receive $0 for a good you own, or exchange it for another good. The second condition swaps the owned and alternative good. Mug v. $5 shows no endowment effect – even though the standard exchange paradigm (that is, not the "retention" paradigm) with these goods shows a significant endowment effect. 

• For the standard “loss aversion ratio” test, not accepting the bet is the status quo. This test, too, can be recast: Would you rather receive $0 with a probability of 1 or take a 50-50 bet with the possibility of winning or losing $15? People seem to have a slight preference for the risky alternative. 

• When stakes are higher, preferences shift toward the sure thing – but this could reflect risk aversion, not loss aversion. (And, loss aversion is generally taken to be independent of the stakes.) 

• When you ask people directly about the psychological impact of winning or losing something – you ask them how they feel about these events – losing doesn't dominate in terms of the magnitude of feelings. How do you feel about losing a mug versus winning a mug? 

• How do you feel about losing $3 versus winning $3? What about $100? At the low stakes, people seem to care more about the gain. 

• Loss “frames” are not generally more motivating than “gain” frames (despite some evidence to the contrary in certain domains). 

• Why is loss aversion so popular given its questionable evidentiary base? Perhaps in part due to a status-quo bias among researchers(!), or confirmation bias within Kuhnian “normal science.” 

• Loss aversion holds intuitive appeal: we all feel some losses acutely. And the name “loss aversion” itself is persuasive.

Sjåstad and Baumeister (2018) on Planning Aversion

Hallgeir Sjåstad and Roy F. Baumeister, “The Future and the Will: Planning Requires Self-control, and Ego Depletion Leads to Planning Aversion.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 76: 127-141, 2018.

• The authors hypothesize that the willingness to engage in the task of making plans for the future requires self-control; therefore, people who generally have low self-control ("trait" self-control) are less likely to plan, and people who are "ego depleted," who are fatigued ("state" self-control), also will be less likely to plan. (As with many notions in the behavioral sciences, ego depletion is not without its share of controversy.) 

• This article, therefore, adopts the view that willpower draws on a depletable resource, and that when people have depleted that resource through cognitively taxing tasks, they will, in the short term, display reduced willpower (be ego-depleted). In other words, people with higher trait and state self-control will plan more.

• The authors conduct four studies. Study 1 looks at the correlation between trait self-control and planning; Study 2 and Study 3 ask if depletion (low state self-control) reduces planning; and, Study 4 tries to identify the channel through which ego depletion might undermine planning. 

• Study 1 (N=201, Amazon Mechanical Turk, 30 cent payment per participant!) asks individuals questions about the extent of their self-control, their engagement in planning in the past, and their intended planning in the future. Sure enough, high self-control is associated with high past and future planning. Further, there is some evidence that women plan more than men.

• Study 2 is a lab experiment (n=105), where the control (non-depleted) group starts with a relatively easy, 12-minute writing task (avoid the letters x and z) and the depleted group has a 24-minute, difficult task (avoid the letters A and N); this depletion method is used to overcome problems identified in earlier experiments where shorter or less onerous tasks do not do much to distinguish the two groups. Those with the hard writing task report being both more exhausted and less interested (than those with the easy task) in making plans for the next four weeks. The depleted folks are less happy, too, but it doesn’t seem to be mood differences that dissuade the planning.

• Study 3 takes advantage of the possibility that shopping at Ikea tends to makes couples miserable! The participants (N=112) are Ikea shoppers in Norway, with half surveyed pre-shopping, and half surveyed post-shopping. Those who have completed their shopping report making many more recent decisions than the pre-shoppers, as well as being more exhausted. Further, post-shoppers are less willing to plan, though they do not express lower ambitions for the future. (They still want the benefits of planning, it seems, but are less willing to put in the effort.) 

• Study 4 (N=128) picks up on the mechanism connecting ego depletion with planning aversion. Once again, laboratory participants are separated into depletion groups through differentially trying writing tasks. But in this experiment, they are given the opportunity to actually engage in planning, instead of just being asked about their intentions to plan in the future. 

• The participants are asked how hard they like to work, and how hard they think planning would be. Again, the depleted folks avoid planning; further, they express a lessened desire to exert effort to engage in planning, and this altered desire (greater effort avoidance) mediates much of the relationship between depletion and planning: effort avoidance seems to be a major channel connecting depletion to reduced planning.

• "A vicious circle might develop in which failure to plan creates stresses and difficulties, which impose a further drain on limited self-regulatory resources, which in turn makes people all the more reluctant to plan [p. 139]."

Vis and Kuijpers (2018) on Prospect Theory and Foreign Policy

Barbara Vis and Dieuwertje Kuijpers, “Prospect Theory and Foreign Policy Decision-Making: Underexposed Issues, Advancements, and Ways Forward.” Contemporary Security Policy 39(4): 575-589, 2018.

• Risk, in both prospect theory and in useful foreign policy applications, involves outcome uncertainty—so risk considerations are important in the gains domain as well as the loss domain. 

• Probability weighting often is ignored in applications of prospect theory, but it can override the usual “risk averse for gains, risk loving for losses” result. 

• In particular, low probability gains might see risk loving behavior, and low probability losses might be met with risk averse behavior. 

• And in foreign policy applications, low probabilities for unusual events are common. 

• Multiple dimensions are relevant in foreign policy decisions, so there can be multiple reference points, and outcomes might involve gains with respect to some reference points but losses with respect to other reference points. 

• When (to whom and for what decisions) might prospect theory apply? What decisions are better described by expected utility theory? 

• Oddly, ambiguity goes unmentioned in this article.

Rouyard et al. (2018) on Prospect Theory and Chronic Disease

Thomas Rouyard, Arthur Attema, Richard Baskerville, José Leal, Alastair Gray, “Risk Attitudes of People with ‘Manageable’ Chronic Disease: An Analysis Under Prospect Theory.” Social Science & Medicine 214: 144-153, 2018.

• Many patients are non-compliant with recommended medical treatments, at a cost to their health. Is it possible that their choices reflect risk-loving behavior in the loss domain?

• Two outcomes are examined in this study, longevity and quality of life. The usable sample size is n=110; 52 members of this sample have Type 2 diabetes mellitus.

• The empirical approach is aimed at identifying the prospect theory “value function” (in both the loss and gain domains) and the probability weighting (of an objective probability of .5). The estimation of the value function includes an estimation of the extent of loss aversion.

• Many questions are of the nature: Your status quo is to live 20 more years with an excellent quality of life. You must choose between option A, which would give you (with certainty) an additional 3 years of life with a pretty good quality of life, or option B, which offers a 50% chance of gaining 6 years of life, 3 years of high quality and 3 years of low quality, and a 50% chance of remaining with the status quo.

• For loss aversion, the relevant question is of the nature: The status quo is to live 20 more years with an excellent quality of life. A risky prospect available to you involves a 50% probability of gaining an additional 10 years of life with a pretty good quality of life, and a 50% probability of losing L years of life. What is the L that makes you indifferent between the risky prospect and the status quo?

• The authors find that most folks are risk averse in both the loss and gains domains. Older people tend to be more risk averse. Loss aversion is significant (median λ=1.19).

• It probably isn’t risk seeking that leads to medical noncompliance.