Theyre not totally bogus, but theyre not definitive either.
Heres whats going really on.
in theJournal of Personality and Social Psychologythat changed how we thought about willpower completely.
The more self-control you use in the moment, the less you have to use in the future.
Weve mentioned thisidea of limited willpower a coupleof times, because at its core, itfeelslike its true.
In fact, many similar studies followed over the years that seemed to reinforce this idea.
Researchers can manipulate data to meet either end.
So, what does all this mean to you as a normal person?
It means scientists arent totally certain how willpower or self-control work.
Self-control can lapse, but we dont know exactly why.
We might have a reserve of willpower that were tapping every time we make a choice.
Or we might not.
In the end, ego depletion is still a theory that needs testing.
Its likely best for most of us to go back to chalking up bad decisions to general fatigue.
According to a2013 paperpublished in theJournal of Experimental Psychology,thats certainly the case.
Out of the 36 labs, only one reported the same significant effects as the original study.
Which is, again, all to say that we still have evidence on both sides.
So whats really going on here?
Should you avoid looking at $100 bills?
Do you suddenly become an asshole every time you open your wallet?
Does the very act of seeing a $100 bill turn you into a free market capitalist?
Well, it depends.
Theres an argument here that the biggest influencing factor is how important money is to you to begin with.
Or maybe thats not a factor at all.
We dont actually know, thats just a theory.
For the time being, youre probably best offignoring how much money you have and just fixing your habits.
Theres even research to prove it.
This is the kind of stuff that fills the heads of authors of self-help books.
Unfortunately, these studies arent as definitive as youd think.
The other eight labs found either no evidence of higher ratings or results in the opposite direction altogether.
Thats not the whole story though.
Its arguable the participants altered their behavior since they knew a camera was on them.
That alone could have skewed the results.
Replicating studies is hard, especially with social sciences.
Even if youre doing it by the book and replicating a study exactly, the results might be different.
This doesnt mean the original results are false, but it does mean its worth looking deeper.
For a more recent example,we recently pointed outthat another priming study had its results called into question.
Recently, theReproducibility Projectlaunched with backing from theAssociation for Psychological Science.
Illustration by Angelica Alzona.
Images byBridget Coila,Sara,University of Liverpool.
