Ego Depletion and Mindsets

“The basic premise of resource depletion (also termed “ego depletion”) is that self-control processes such as actively responding to influence attempts, exercising self-control, or using willpower require resources that are finite: hence, the active self can become depleted” (Fennis & Janssen, 2010; p. 238). Muraven, Tice and Baumeister (1998) found that trying to ignore distractions draws from an individual’s

40

limited reserve of will power. Indeed, the research suggests that any action that necessitates the exertion of willpower is likely to drain self-control resources and induce “resource depletion”. The effects of resource depletion have long been indirectly acknowledged.

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle--they are strictly limited in number, battle--they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments” (Whitehead, 1911; p. 61).

The depletion of these reserves undermines an individual’s future self-control by making the individual differentially more (less) sensitive to affective (cognitive) decision criteria. For example, resource depletion reduces resistance and makes individuals more vulnerable to a wide variety of compliance gaining (Dolinski, Ciszek, Godlewski, & Zawadzki, 2002; Janssen, Fennis, Pruyn, & Vohs, 2008) and persuasive communications (Burkley, 2008; Wan, Rucker, Tormala, & Clarkson, 2010; Wheeler, Briñol, & Hermann, 2007) by promoting a greater reliance on heuristics during message processing (Janssen et al., 2008). Interestingly, Burkley (2008) demonstrated that attempting to resist highly persuasive appeals can induce resource depletion. Burkley exposed student participants to a discrepant message (proposal to shorten the summer holidays to one month) which was either personally relevant (being introduced in two years’ time) or not personally relevant (being introduced in ten years’ time). Predictably, participants exposed to the personally

41

relevant message resisted the message more robustly and rated the proposition less favourability than participants exposed to the non-personally relevant proposition.

More importantly, individuals who exhibited the greatest resistance also exhibited the greatest resource depletion effects. Specifically, participants who resisted the message were found to be less persistent in a subsequent puzzle solving task. Study 2 and Study 3 demonstrated that exerting self-control (Study 1: hand grip task, Study 2:

thought suppression task) subsequently made individuals less resistant to a moderately discrepant message. Interestingly, a fourth study demonstrated that the resistance reducing effects of resource depletion were only evidenced when individuals resisted strong counter-attitudinal messages. Resource depletion had no effect on resistance levels when the counter-attitudinal messages contained weak arguments. However, Wheeler, Brinol, and Hermann (2007) suggest that depleted and non-depleted individuals are equally persuaded by strong arguments. Depleted participants were found to be significantly more persuaded by weak arguments than non-depleted participants. While non-depleted participants produce more (less) favourable thoughts when they read strong (weak) arguments, depleted participants did not distinguish between strong and weak arguments. The research showed that depleted and non-depleted individuals generated a similar number of thoughts which suggests that the extent of message elaboration does not mediate this effect.

In recent years, researchers have begun to investigate how mindsets regulate ego depletion and vice versa. For example, Bruyneel and Dewitte (2006) suggests that exercising self-control induces a “narrow” mindset. This mindset makes individuals less likely to attend to peripheral stimuli, more likely to arrange objects in narrow categorisations and predisposes individuals to using more concrete language.

42

Bruyneel and Dewitte (2012) replicated some of these results and demonstrated that resource depleted individuals are more likely to provide lower estimates of egocentric spatial distances (i.e. estimates of distances to known local locations). These studies provide converging evidence to suggest that self-regulation promotes the use of low level construal when making evaluative judgements. Other research has found that switching between mindsets (e.g. from an abstract mindset to concrete mindset) may also exhaust regulatory resources and induce resource depletion (Hamilton et al., 2011). The authors hypothesised that switching between mindsets exhausts an executive function that relies upon the same psychological resources used in self-regulation. Across five studies the researchers demonstrated that switching mindsets depleted cognitive resources and subsequently adversely influenced future decision making. Interestingly, research suggests that mindsets may influence how individuals allocate cognitive resources.

Bosmans, Pieters and Baumgartner (2010) found that a “get ready mindset” is induced when individuals anticipate a demanding future task. The research suggests that simply thinking about a future task may activate additional cognitive resources that are subsequently misappropriated to the current unrelated task. Interestingly, the resource allocating abilities of this mindset are determined by the individual’s ability to mentally separate the current task from the future task. Specifically, when an individual’s ability to separate a task is low, the misappropriation of cognitive resources is higher and vice versa. The misappropriation of cognitive resources is an unhelpful consequence of the “get ready mindset”. Various studies have offered remedies for resource depletion; personal performance monitoring (Wan & Sternthal, 2008), prayer (Friese & Wänke, 2014) or boosting energy levels by eating glucose

43

(Gailliot et al., 2007). However, recent research suggests that mindsets may also have a role to play in regulating the effects of resource depletion. While ego depletion may induce mindsets that compromise resistance, the opposite is also found to be true;

mindsets can attenuate the effects of resource depletion. Walsh (2014) demonstrated that goal priming may be used to prime resistance which can offset the effects of ego depletion. Specifically, Walsh (2014) demonstrated that individuals who were primed with self-control goals were subsequently more likely to exhibit self-control and were also less likely to be adversely affected by an ego depletion task. Similarly, Fransen and Fennis (2014) found that implicit resistance strategies can outperform explicit resistance strategies because they offer the same resistive protection without the same outlay in cognitive resources. The following section discusses mindsets which increase consumer resistance rather than undermine it.