Commentary: Misguided Effort with Elusive Implications, and Sifting Signal from Noise with Replication Science
Abstract
Driven by its elegant simplicity and intuitive appeal, the ego-depletion effect has received considerable attention in the scientific literature and media. Self-control is conceptualized as a limited resource that becomes depleted after a period of exertion leading to reduced self-control capacity (Baumeister et al., 1998). Our meta-analysis of published studies adopting the sequential-task paradigm to test the ego-depletion effect revealed a medium-sized effect (d = 0.62). However, another meta-analysis identified substantive small-study bias and a corrected effect that was close to zero (Carter et al., 2015).
We set out to provide a pre-registered replication of the ego-depletion effect as a Perspectives on Psychological Science registered replication report (RRR) to resolve the matter. The depletion RRR adopted a standardized “sequential task” design with a tightly-controlled protocol based on Sripada et al.'s (2014) experiment with 23 laboratories conducting replications. We highlight key findings of the depletion RRR, respond to Baumeister and Vohs' (2016) and Sripada et al.'s (2016) commentaries, highlight some emerging issues, and outline potential ways forward for the field.
Meta-analysis of the RRR findings across labs found the ego-depletion effect to be close to zero corroborating Carter et al.'s analysis (Hagger et al., 2016). Important additional findings from the depletion RRR should be noted: all but one lab predicted a priori that there would be a substantive…
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