Open AccessThe Benefits of Self-Set Goals: Is Ego Depletion Really a Result of Self-Control Failure?
Author(s) -
Mario Wenzel,
Daniela Zahn,
Zarah Rowland,
Thomas Kubiak
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0157009
Subject(s) - ego depletion , id, ego and super ego , operationalization , self control , set (abstract data type) , psychology , task (project management) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , economics , philosophy , management , epistemology , programming language
Research on ego depletion aims at explaining self-control failures in daily life. Both resource models and motivational accounts have been proposed for explanation. The aim of the present research was to test the different assumptions in two dual-task experiments where we operationalized ego depletion as a performance deviation from a self-set goal. In two experiments, we found evidence for this deviation contradicting motivational accounts of ego depletion: Participants experiencing ego depletion set themselves a stricter instead of a more lenient goal than controls, in that they chose to eat less cookies or wanted to perform better. Moreover, only participants without an initial self-control task could adhere to their self-set goal, whereas participants in the ego depletion condition in both experiments could not follow through with their more ambitious intentions. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the importance of goals in ego depletion research.