Intellectual performance and ego depletion: role of the self in logical reasoning and other information processing.

By B. Schmeichel, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy F. Baumeister. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003

895 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some complex thinking requires active guidance by the self, but simpler mental activities do not. Depletion of the self's regulatory resources should therefore impair the former and not the latter. Resource depletion was manipulated by having some participants initially regulate attention (Studies 1 and 3) or emotion (Study 2). As compared with no-regulation participants who did not perform such exercises, depleted participants performed worse at logic and reasoning (Study 1), cognitive extrapolation (Study 2), and a test of thoughtful reading comprehension (Study 3). The same manipulations failed to cause decrements on a test of general knowledge (Study 2) or on memorization and recall of nonsense syllables (Study 3). Successful performance at complex thinking may therefore rely on limited regulatory resources.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8de25d67694898e55355b76e6a09d86d635f6bbe

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Citations in the corpus

Consideration of future consequences, ego-depletion, and self-control: Support for distinguishing between CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future sub-scales (2008, background): “…with this reasoning, research indicates that manipulations intended to deplete self-regulatory resources lead to reduced intellectual performance (Schmeichel et al., 2003) and that taxing the central executive, for example through a divided attention task, increases temporal discounting (Hinson,…”
Unable to Resist Temptation: How Self-control Depletion Promotes Unethical Behavior (2011, background): “As in prior research (DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007; Fischer, Greitemeyer, & Frey, 2007, 2008; Gilbert, Krull, & Pelham, 1988; Schmeichel et al., 2003; Vohs & Faber, 2007), participants watched a 6-min video clip on a computer, without audio, of a woman being interviewed.”
Can counter-stereotypes boost flexible thinking? (2013, background): “…detriments whenever more complex and effortful processing is required, such as on logic and reasoning tasks, thoughtful reading comprehension (Schmeichel et al., 2003), and creative idea generation (Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2011; Dietrich, 2004; Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012; Golden, 1975;…”
I felt low and my purse feels light: depleting mood regulation attempts affect risk decision making (2009, background): “Simple mental activities like this have been found to not be depleting ( Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003 ).”
Mental fatigue influence on effort-related cardiovascular response: difficulty effects and extension across cognitive performance domains (2007, background): “If predictable fatigue effects extend consistently, it will be reasonable to conclude their extension is not artifactual, but rather indicative of a single underlying process, presumably associated with the depletion of a common executive resource (e.g., Baumeister et al. 2005; Gailliot et al. 2007;”
Co‐Worker Exclusion and Employee Outcomes: An Investigation of the Moderating Roles of Perceived Organizational and Social Support (2014, background): “Theorists reason and find that negative ruminative thoughts may further hinder employee performance as they consume and drain workers of needed mental energy to complete their tasks and duties correctly and efficiently (e.g., Schmeichel et al., 2003).”
Dealing with feeling: a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. (2012, neutral): “Table 2 Characteristics and Effect Sizes for Studies Included in the Meta-Analysis Study Experiment Emotion induction Experimental strategy Control strategy NE NC Effect sizes included Experiential Behavioral Physiological Arch & Craske (2006) 1 Negative affect D4 Cont1 20 20 0.51 0.00 Arch & Craske”
Staying on track: Planned goal striving is protected from disruptive internal states (2010, background): “For example, participants who had to control their attention on a first task performed worse on a second task (reasoning task) as compared to participants who did not have to control their attention ( Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003, Study 1). As ego depletion effects are ubiquitous, it is imp”
Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head? (2010, methodology): “Finally, they completed eight challenging IQ problems, as previous research has shown that intellectual performance is particularly sensitive to ego depletion (Schmeichel et al., 2003).”
Acts of Benevolence: A Limited-Resource Account of Compliance with Charitable Requests (2009, positive): “In their work, Schmeichel et al. (2003) found that self-regulatory resource depletion impaired performance on cognitively demanding tasks but left performance on simpler mental tasks that use well-learned and standard procedures unaffected.”