Implicit theories of willpower and “ego depletion”

Date

2017

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

The goal of this research was to check, if personal theories about the nature of willpower will moderate depletion of self-regulating ability in Estonian and Russian-Estonian school environment. In computer environment high school participants (age 16-18) filled out questionnaires about implicit theories of willpower, personality traits and positivity, then completed two self-control demanding tasks: stop signal task and Stroop task. There was no significant effect of implicit theories on self-control depletion during the experiment. We also did not observe ego depletion in our participants, but instead got a reverse effect: participants from self-control demanding condition performed at Stroop task better than control group. The nature of self-control and ego depletion need more research before studying the influence of implicit theories on self-regulation.

Description

Keywords

ego depletion, willpower, self-control, implicit theories, ego kurnamine, tähtejõud, enesekontroll, implitsiitsed teooriad

Citation