How do they know it’s not the persons idiosyncratic “availability of willpower” after a demanding task that shapes idiosyncratic beliefs about willpower?
I wondered that too. But they covered that objection in the paper. Study #2. They manipulated people’s beliefs about willpower by administering a “push poll”, and then tested willpower depletion.
However, it seems reasonable to me that push polling about someone’s future behavior will lead them to act consistently with the signal they just sent in the poll—like in Cialdini’s Influence, where people are polled on whether they like to go to opera, or give charitably, by some attractive person they want to impress, and then after affirming are ambushed with a sales pitch (they thought it was an innocent poll but are trapped by their answers). So it seems reasonable to assume that those who were push-polled into believing they will become either sloppier, or more accurate, with fatigue, would act consonantly.
But I don’t think this objection is likely the whole story. The simplest explanation is that people’s stated expectations of their performance do shape their performance—the power of positive thinking, and obviously, negative. (possibly unvoiced/persistent expectations as well as explicitly declared, although of course it’s nearly impossible to measure such things surreptitiously).
So it seems reasonable to assume that those who were push-polled into believing they will become either sloppier, or more accurate, with fatigue, would act consonantly.
Right. I’m not convinced that priming people so close to a task tells us much about their actual beliefs in general, and how they will behave outside a lab: it just tells us what people believe they believe. It’s like the quick fix people get after motivational seminars that fades away.
The manipulation didn’t measure the effect of beliefs; it measured the effect of the cognitive affirmation of a belief. That’s not really a measure of truly “implicit”
The results of this study could still be explained by some third variable underlying both self-control and implicit beliefs about self-control (e.g. Conscientiousness, sleep deprivation, akrasia, perception of a task as difficult...).
Study 4 does shed some light on this problem:
Next, we tested the reverse causal relationship—from self-regulation
at T2 to implicit theories at T3. Implicit theories at T3 were regressed on T2 self-regulation, controlling for T2 implicit theories. There was no significant relationship between any T2 self-regulatory variable and T3 implicit theories, ΔFs(1, 38) < 1.30
Basically, your self-control doesn’t predict your beliefs a month later. This potentially rules out some stable third variable, like Conscientiousness. But it doesn’t rule out other fluctuating third variables. For sleep deprivation, for instance, we would not primarily expect your sleep last month to influence both your self-control and your beliefs about your self-control now; it’s your sleep this month that matters most. Same thing with stress, workload, etc...
The study concludes:
Taken together, the results suggest that in some cases, ego depletion may result not from a true lack of resources after an exhausting task, but from people’s beliefs about their resources.
This study does suggest that beliefs about willpower may have some sort of effect (at least, if you are motivated/demotivated or engaging in affirmations), but it’s very weak evidence. The lab manipulation they attempted of people’s beliefs about their self-control is consistent with the author’s hypotheses, but not terribly convincing. The longitudinal study could still be explained by third underlying causal variables. I still find the willpower depletion hypothesis plausible, at least for some people, on some types of tasks.
UPDATE: I found this observation in the notes:
A possible alternative explanation is that people with a nonlimited resource theory have better self-control than people with a limited resource theory. However, a pilot study (N = 65) did not find a negative relationship between a limited-resource theory and trait self-control (Schwarzer, Diehl, & Schmitz, 1999), r = .17, p > .20.
This does seem to rule out self-control as an underlying third variable. Though it’s also a bit strange in light of the results of the current study: if resource theory isn’t related to self-control, why is it predicting performance on tasks like the Stroop test that supposedly measure self-control? Maybe it’s Jonathan Graehl’s hypothesis of making excuses to exercise less self-control than one is capable of. Or maybe “self-control” is being operationalized in different ways.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the German study they are referring to through they link in the references; all I can find is the scale it used.
How do they know it’s not the persons idiosyncratic “availability of willpower” after a demanding task that shapes idiosyncratic beliefs about willpower?
I wondered that too. But they covered that objection in the paper. Study #2. They manipulated people’s beliefs about willpower by administering a “push poll”, and then tested willpower depletion.
Excellent point.
However, it seems reasonable to me that push polling about someone’s future behavior will lead them to act consistently with the signal they just sent in the poll—like in Cialdini’s Influence, where people are polled on whether they like to go to opera, or give charitably, by some attractive person they want to impress, and then after affirming are ambushed with a sales pitch (they thought it was an innocent poll but are trapped by their answers). So it seems reasonable to assume that those who were push-polled into believing they will become either sloppier, or more accurate, with fatigue, would act consonantly.
But I don’t think this objection is likely the whole story. The simplest explanation is that people’s stated expectations of their performance do shape their performance—the power of positive thinking, and obviously, negative. (possibly unvoiced/persistent expectations as well as explicitly declared, although of course it’s nearly impossible to measure such things surreptitiously).
Right. I’m not convinced that priming people so close to a task tells us much about their actual beliefs in general, and how they will behave outside a lab: it just tells us what people believe they believe. It’s like the quick fix people get after motivational seminars that fades away.
The manipulation didn’t measure the effect of beliefs; it measured the effect of the cognitive affirmation of a belief. That’s not really a measure of truly “implicit”
The results of this study could still be explained by some third variable underlying both self-control and implicit beliefs about self-control (e.g. Conscientiousness, sleep deprivation, akrasia, perception of a task as difficult...).
Study 4 does shed some light on this problem:
Basically, your self-control doesn’t predict your beliefs a month later. This potentially rules out some stable third variable, like Conscientiousness. But it doesn’t rule out other fluctuating third variables. For sleep deprivation, for instance, we would not primarily expect your sleep last month to influence both your self-control and your beliefs about your self-control now; it’s your sleep this month that matters most. Same thing with stress, workload, etc...
The study concludes:
This study does suggest that beliefs about willpower may have some sort of effect (at least, if you are motivated/demotivated or engaging in affirmations), but it’s very weak evidence. The lab manipulation they attempted of people’s beliefs about their self-control is consistent with the author’s hypotheses, but not terribly convincing. The longitudinal study could still be explained by third underlying causal variables. I still find the willpower depletion hypothesis plausible, at least for some people, on some types of tasks.
UPDATE: I found this observation in the notes:
This does seem to rule out self-control as an underlying third variable. Though it’s also a bit strange in light of the results of the current study: if resource theory isn’t related to self-control, why is it predicting performance on tasks like the Stroop test that supposedly measure self-control? Maybe it’s Jonathan Graehl’s hypothesis of making excuses to exercise less self-control than one is capable of. Or maybe “self-control” is being operationalized in different ways.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the German study they are referring to through they link in the references; all I can find is the scale it used.