title: Carrying on or giving in: the role of automatic processes in overcoming ego depletion.
abstract: Research has shown that repeated exercise of self-control leads to impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, a phenomenon labelled ego depletion. The current research investigates the influence of automatic processes on self-control performance. Study 1 shows that activation of persistence leads to stable self-control performance and may help to overcome effects of ego depletion. Initially depleted participants kept their physical self-control performances constant when primed with persistence. If such a prime was absent, self-control performance of depleted participants decreased indicating ego depletion. Using a different manipulation, these findings were replicated in Study 2.
authors.affiliation: Universiteit Maastricht, Faculty of Psychology, Experimental Psychololgy, PO box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. j.alberts@psychology.unimaas.nl
authors.forename: Hugo J E M
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Alberts
authors.forename: Carolien
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martijn
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Greb
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Merckelbach
authors.forename: Nanne K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: de Vries
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001332:Automatism; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept