Commentary: “Misguided Effort with Elusive Implications” and “A Multi-Lab Pre-Registered Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect”

Citation: Drummond A and Philipp MC (2017) Commentary: " Misguided Effort with Elusive Implications " and " A Multi-Lab Pre-Registered Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect ". A recent Registered Replication Report (RRR; Hagger et al., 2016) was conducted to examine the ego depletion effect first reported by Baumeister et al. (1998) by replicating Sripada et al.'s (2014) study in 23 international laboratories. Participants completed either an easy or difficult version of a letter " e " task (i.e., Depletion Condition) followed by a multi-source interference task (MSIT) in which participants' reaction time (RT) and reaction time variability (RTV) were recorded as they made congruent and incongruent responses (see https://osf.io/v79xp/ for complete protocol). Ego depletion theory predicts that a sufficiently depleting letter " e " task should result in poorer self-regulation on incongruent MSIT trials (i.e., greater RTs and RTVs). Hagger et al. (2016) found that the ego depletion effect was trivial in effect size and not significantly different from zero. This has called some to question the verisimilitude of ego depletion theory (e.g., Engber, 2016). Yet, several commentaries have also argued that Hagger et al's procedures may be an invalid test of ego depletion eloquent reply). One intriguing criticism from Baumeister and Vohs (2016) is that the depleting letter " e " task used in the RRR procedures did not require the exertion necessary to evoke ego-depletion effects on the MSIT. Although the RRR's depleting letter " e " task was rated as a more effortful, difficult, and frustrating than the easy version (Hagger et al., 2016), the task may not have sufficiently taxed self-regulation. One method to examine if this criticism is plausible is to test the underlying process of ego-depletion theory using the existing RRR data. A recent reanalysis of the Hagger et al.'s (2016) data attempted to address some of Baumeister and Vohs's (2016) concerns by employing a moderation analysis to investigate whether ego depletion was evident in participants who reported exerting more effort on the depleting letter " e " task (Dang, 2016). Although intriguing, Dang's (2016) reanalysis is problematic on three fronts. First, Baumeister et al.'s (1998) ego depletion model theorizes a process by which more challenging, habit-breaking tasks cause depleted self-regulation, and that depletion, in turn, causes ego depletion effects. In other words, effort should be a mediating variable. A moderation model is therefore problematic: It doesn't consider depleted self-regulation as the process …