Intense Self-Regulatory Effort Increases Need for Conservation and Reduces Attractiveness of Energy-Requiring Rewards
Abstract
Abstract. Exertion of self-control produces distinct motivational consequences: the motivation to conserve energy and the motivation to seek rewards. We propose that heightened conservation inhibits reward-seeking, but only when the pursuit of the reward entails substantial energy expenditure. In two studies, we manipulated self-regulatory effort and then had participants engage in an additional task that was either easy or difficult. In Study 1, we found that self-regulatory effort tended to heighten reward-sensitivity but only when the subsequent task was easy. In Study 2, we measured pupil dilation to assess reward sensitivity while participants viewed images of rewarding stimuli. When the need to conserve was intense, we observed reduced pupil dilation for rewards that were energy-requiring but not for those that were energy-giving.
References
2019). Scientists rise up against statistical significance. Nature, 567, 305–307.
(2002). Yielding to temptation: Self-control failure, impulsive purchasing, and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 28, 670–676. https://doi.org/10.1086/338209
(1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252–1265. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252
(2018). The strength model of self-regulation: Conclusions from the second decade of willpower research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13, 141–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617716946
(2009). The unconscious eye opener: Pupil dilation reveals strategic recruitment of resources upon presentation of subliminal reward cues. Psychological Science, 20, 1313–1315. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02443.x
(2015). Motivation and cognitive control: From behavior to neural mechanism. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 83–113. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015044
(2008). The pupil as a measure of emotional arousal and autonomic activation. Psychophysiology, 45, 602–607. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00654.x
(2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 822–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822
(2008). The role of self-control in resistance to persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 419–431. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207310458
(2014). Publication bias and the limited strength model of self-control: Has the evidence for ego depletion been overestimated? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 823. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00823
(1994). Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 319–333. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.2.319
(2009). A tale of two tasks: Reversing the self-regulatory resource depletion effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1318–1324. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014604
(2018). An updated meta-analysis of the ego depletion effect. Psychological Research, 82, 645–651. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0862-x
(2012). Taking stock of self-control: A meta-analysis of how trait self-control relates to a wide range of behaviors. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 76–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868311418749
(2012). Self-control and aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 20–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411429451
(2004).
(To buy or not to buy? Self-control and self-regulatory failure in purchase behavior . In K. D. VohsR. F. BaumeisterEds., Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 509–524). New York, NY: Guilford Press.2009). Impaired self-control can promote prosocial and health-fostering behavior. In European Health Psychology Society Conference 2009
(2003). Leading us not into temptation: Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 296–309. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.296
(2011). On taming horses and strengthening riders: Recent developments in research on interventions to improve self-control in health behaviors. Self and Identity, 10, 336–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2010.536417
(2011). On conceptualizing self-control as more than the effortful inhibition of impulses. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 352–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868311411165
(2007). Self-regulation and sexual restraint: Dispositionally and temporarily poor self-regulatory abilities contribute to failures at restraining sexual behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 173–186. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868307303030
(2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325–336. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.2.325
(2014). When the motivational consequences of ego depletion collide: Conservation dominates over reward-seeking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 217–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.07.009
(2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 546–573. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616652873
(2012). What is ego depletion? Toward a mechanistic revision of the resource model of self-control. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 450–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612454134
(2014). Why self-control seems (but may not be) limited. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 127–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.12.009
(2013). Revised standards for statistical evidence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 19313–19317. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313476110
(2016). Depletion suspends the comparator mechanism in monitoring: The role of chronic self-consciousness in sequential self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 284–300. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000108
(2003). Conformity and dietary disinhibition: A test of the ego‐strength model of self‐regulation. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 33, 165–171. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.10132
(2017). The unappreciated heterogeneity of effect sizes: Implications for power, precision, planning of research, and replication. Retrieved from http://davidakenny.net/recp.htm
(2015). On integrating the components of self-control. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 618–638. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615593382
(2013). An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, 661–679. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12003196
(2017). Too true to be bad: When sets of studies with significant and nonsignificant findings are probably true. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 875–881. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617693058
(2005). International affective picture system (IAPS): Affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual (Technical report). Gainesville, FL: University of Florida.
(2002). Evaluation of a behavioral measure of risk taking: The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 75–84. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.8.2.75
(2016). No evidence of the ego-depletion effect across task characteristics and individual differences: A pre-registered study. PLoS One, 11, e0147770. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147770
(2017). Challenges to ego-depletion research go beyond the replication crisis: A need for tackling the conceptual crisis. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 568. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00568
(2012).
(Ego depletion: Theory and evidence . In R. M. RyanEd., The Oxford handbook of human motivation (pp. 111–126). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.2002). Self-control and alcohol restraint: An initial application of the self-control strength model. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 16, 113–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-164X.16.2.113
(2006). Conserving self-control strength. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 524–537. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.3.524
(2000). Is depression an adaptation? Archives of General Psychiatry, 57, 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.57.1.14
(1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231
(1992). When small effects are impressive. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 160–164. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.1.160
(2003). One hundred years of social psychology quantitatively described. Review of General Psychology, 7, 331–363. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.7.4.331
(2015). A closer look at cognitive control: Differences in resource allocation during updating, inhibition and switching as revealed by pupillometry. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 494. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00494
(2014). “When the going gets tough, who keeps going?” Depletion sensitivity moderates the ego-depletion effect. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 647. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00647
(2007). Attention control, memory updating, and emotion regulation temporarily reduce the capacity for executive control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 241–255. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.241
(2015). Exercising self-control increases relative left frontal cortical activation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11, 282–288. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv112
(2010). Exercising self-control increases approach motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 162–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019797
(2009). Self-affirmation and self-control: Affirming core values counteracts ego depletion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 770–782. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014635
(2002). Forgetting all else: On the antecedents and consequences of goal shielding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1261–1280. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.126
(2012). Using effect size – or why the P value is not enough. Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 4, 279–282. https://doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-12-00156.1
(2004). High self‐control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271–324. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00263.x
(2009). Triggering conservation of the self’s regulatory resources. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31, 255–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973530903058490
(2011).
(The urge to stop: The cognitive and biological nature of acute mental fatigue . In P. L. AckermanEd., Cognitive fatigue: Multidisciplinary perspectives on current research and future applications (pp. 149–164). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.2012). Motivation, personal beliefs, and limited resources all contribute to self-control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 943–947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.03.002
(2007). Spent resources: Self-regulatory resource availability affects impulse buying. Journal of Consumer Research, 33, 537–547. https://doi.org/10.1086/510228
(2000). Self-regulatory failure: A resource-depletion approach. Psychological Science, 11, 249–254. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00250
(2013). Self-regulatory depletion enhances neural responses to rewards and impairs top-down control. Psychological Science, 24, 2262–2271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613492985
(2003). Adaptive self-regulation of unattainable goals: Goal disengagement, goal reengagement, and subjective well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1494–1508. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167203256921
(