You probably know that it's easier to lose weight if the cookie jar is empty. Seems obvious: you can't snack on cookies you don't have. But there's more truth here than cookie shortages can explain. If the cookies aren't there to tempt you, you needn't spend energy resisting temptation. Ego depletion is the idea that energy spent on self-regulation isn't available again until you rest and recover.
The term was coined by Roy Baumeister just about 15 years ago. [Baumeister 1998] The phenomenon has since been repeatedly demonstrated experimentally.
In one experiment, test subjects are presented with two foods — radishes and chocolate chip cookies. Individuals in one group were instructed to eat three radishes and no cookies, and individuals in the other are instructed to eat three cookies and no radishes. All individuals are left alone in a cookie-aroma-filled room with both foods, long enough to tempt them to sample the food they were told to avoid. Later, each subject was given an unsolveable problem, and told to spend as long on solving it as they wished. Those instructed to eat the radishes and resist the cookies spent less time on the unsolveable problem, tried fewer different approaches to solving it, and gave up more quickly than those instructed to sample the cookies.
This experiment and many more like it produce results that suggest that resisting temptation depletes a finite resource, analogous to vigorously exercising a muscle. Your "self-regulation system" tires after a period of use. Unless it's given time to rest and recover, its capability is restricted.
Experiments are almost always so artificial-sounding that we must ask, "What does this have to do with reality?" The answer is, in short, "A whole lot."
Ego depletion Resisting temptation depletes
a finite resource, analogous
to vigorously exercising a muscleexplains the effectiveness of many business tactics that predate its discovery by decades, in industries as unrelated as retailing, cable television, and higher education.
Here's an example. Suppose you have several teammates whose interactions with others usually involve unprovoked attacks, condescension, and insults. You don't feel that it's your place to attempt to alter their behavior. When they attack you, which happens at nearly every meeting, you restrain your anger. You refuse to engage with them in their nastiness.
Ego depletion would predict that in such scenarios, the people who are attacked are less able to regulate their own behavior after the incident. They might indulge in sweets after or during the meeting. They might be rude or abusive to others at an unrelated following meeting that day. They might procrastinate performing tiresome or difficult tasks. They might be snippy with loved ones at home that evening.
These are just some of the predictions of the ego depletion hypothesis. In coming issues, we'll explore these ideas in a variety of workplace circumstances. The possibilities are eye opening. Meanwhile, I'm gonna get a cookie. Top Next Issue
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Recent research has raised serious questions about the concept of ego depletion. See, for example, Martin S. Hagger and Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis, "A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect," Perspectives on Psychological Science 11:4, pp. 546-573, 2016. This paper describes a large, coordinated effort to reproduce the main effect that underlies the strength model, with more than 2,000 subjects at 24 different laboratories on several continents. The study failed to reproduce the previously claimed result, which almost conclusively nullifies the theory. However, some, including Baumeister, claim that the experiment was flawed, in that it was inherently unable to find the effect. Daniel Engber has provided a more accessible version of the situation in Slate.
Footnotes
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- Hostile Collaborations
- Sometimes collaboration with people we hold in low regard can be valuable. If we enter a hostile collaboration
without first accepting both the hostility and the value, we might sabotage it outside our awareness,
and that can render the effort worthless — or worse. What are the dynamics of hostile collaborations,
and how can we do them well?
- The Politics of the Critical Path: I
- The Critical Path of a project or activity is the sequence of dependent tasks that determine the earliest
completion date of the effort. If you're responsible for one of these tasks, you live in a unique political
environment.
- Managing Non-Content Risks: I
- When project teams and their sponsors manage risk, they usually focus on those risks most closely associated
with the tasks — content risks. Meanwhile, other risks — non-content risks — get less
attention. Among these are risks related to the processes and politics by which the organization gets
things done.
- Surviving Incompetence: I
- When your organization decides to undertake an effort that will certainly fail, you have options. Continuing
to oppose the decision probably isn't one of them. How can you respond to this incompetence and emerge
with your career intact?
- Fear/Anxiety Bias: I
- When people don't feel safe enough to report the true status of the work underway in an organization,
managers receive an inaccurate impression of the state of the organization. To understand this dynamic,
we must understand psychological safety.
See also Workplace Politics and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 15: Should I Write or Should I Call?
- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
- And on May 22: Rescheduling Collaborative Work
- Rescheduling is what we do when the schedule we have now is so desperately unachievable that we must let go of it because when we look at it we can no longer decide whether to laugh or cry. The fear is that the new schedule might come to the same end. Available here and by RSS on May 22.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group