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Ego Depletion Induces Mental Passivity: Behavioral Effects Beyond Impulse Control

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Ego Depletion Induces Mental Passivity: Behavioral Effects Beyond Impulse Control Motivation Science © 2017 American Psychological Association 2017, Vol. 3, No. 4, 321–336 2333-8113/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mot0000058 Ego Depletion Induces Mental Passivity: Behavioral Effects Beyond Impulse Control Andrew J. Vonasch Kathleen D. Vohs University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Minnesota Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh Roy F. Baumeister University of Arizona Florida State University Three studies supported the hypothesis that people can become mentally and physically passive when resources are depleted by prior acts of self-control. Feeling depleted and recent self-regulatory exertion were associated with preferences for passive behaviors like resting and watching TV. Participants who had to maintain attention in the face of distractions preferred to avoid making consumer decisions as compared with partici- pants who did not. Breaking a habit caused hungry participants to eat more peanuts when doing so was easy (the peanuts lacked shells) and to eat less when eating required minor preparatory action (the peanuts had shells). Mental passivity induced by deple- tion of self-control causes both passive behavior and impulsive behavior, depending on the situation. Keywords: self-regulation, passivity, ego depletion The difference between active and passive status quo. In other words, passive responding responding is one of the most fundamental di- means letting things happen and not intervening mensions among the countless ways that living to change things. creatures can respond to environmental events. The view of self-regulation as an effortful ac- Active responding means that the creature re- tivity that depletes an energy resource has stimu- acts to the external circumstances by seeking to lated much research (for meta-analysis, see Hag- steer the course of events in one rather than ger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010; for another direction. In contrast, passive respond- recent overview of theoretical disputes and issues, ing involves allowing events to unfurl without see Baumeister & Vohs, 2016). The underlying attempting to control the outcome or alter the assumption has been that a particular resource, akin to the folk notion of willpower, is expended in regulating behavior such as by inhibiting im- pulses. The present paper tests an extension to this This article was published Online First July 13, 2017. theory. Moving beyond resisting temptation, it Andrew J. Vonasch, Department of Psychology and Neu- tests the idea that the difference between active roscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and passive responding involves the expenditure Kathleen D. Vohs, Carlson School of Management, Univer- of this same resource. We reasoned that top-down sity of Minnesota; Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh, Eller This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. College of Management, University of Arizona; Roy F. control takes energy and will decline when regu- This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individualBaumeister, user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Department of Psychology, Florida State Uni- latory resources are low. This may result in in- versity. creased inaction insofar as action requires initia- This research was supported in part by Land O’ Lakes tive, but it may also produce increased behavior Excellence in Marketing funds and a grant from the John insofar as inhibitions or stopping the behavior Templeton Foundation. We thank Korey Jones, Katie Lewis, and Marco Romero for data collection and Colin DeYoung for requires top-down control. helpful comments. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- Passivity dressed to Andrew J. Vonasch, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 235 East, Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill, NC Living things vary widely in their capacity 27599. E-mail: [email protected] for active response. It is arguable that plants 321 322 VONASCH, VOHS, POCHEPTSOVA GHOSH, AND BAUMEISTER have almost no active responses. As a revealing expensive form of control is curtailed, to con- example, they remain inactive even while other serve energy, and this could mean broadly a creatures eat them. Animals, in contrast, move passive attitude toward life and events. If men- to eat and to resist being eaten. Among simple tal passivity is a central aspect of depletion, then animals, passive responding means physical depletion may produce physical passivity, espe- stillness, and active responding means physical cially when there are no automatic impulses to movement. take action, and when action requires exerting In humans, the active versus passive distinc- top-down control (e.g., difficult decisions, or tion occurs at both the physical level (stillness initiative). vs. movement) and at the mental level (relying In sum, our investigation focused on the hy- on automatic vs. controlled processes). Mental pothesis that ego depletion produces mental passivity is the absence of active processing to passivity, which entails an abdication of top- override one’s incipient or automatic responses. down mental control over responses. This could Physical passivity is usually a result of mental produce physical passivity and inaction (as in passivity, such as during rest or sleep. To be Banker, Ainsworth, Baumeister, Ariely, & sure, physical passivity can stem from active Vohs, 2017; Baumeister et al., 1998, Study 4; mental processing, such as when someone tries Giacomantonio, Jordan, Fennis, & Panno, 2014; to hold still while being tickled or injected. Job, Bernecker, Miketta, & Friese, 2015)—but Being mentally passive does not necessarily under some circumstances could yield increases mean one’s body is unmoving. A passive person in physical activity (as in most other depletion might simply follow orders, such as walking to studies summarized in Hagger et al., 2010). a specific place. Mental passivity involves let- ting one’s automatic responses to the environ- Active Versus Passive Mental Processes ment drive one’s behavior. Depending on one’s and Behaviors automatic impulses, mentally passive behavior can be either physically passive or physically Either action or inaction can result from men- active. tal passivity. Carver, Johnson, and Joormann Mentally active versus passive responding (2008) proposed that lack of executive function seemingly goes to the essence of volition. Many control leaves the person responding reflexively human decisions and experiences depend on the to environmental cues. That sort of a mentally difference between active and passive respond- passive response style can theoretically produce ing. A health warning may be passively ignored responses ranging from physical lassitude to or met with an active change of behavior. Peo- disinhibited violence. ple’s moral judgments depend greatly on this The hypothesis that ego depletion can pro- difference. Most people judge actively killing duce mental passivity fits some previous find- someone to be much more reprehensible than ings. For example, judges on parole boards can passively letting someone die, even if the out- make an easy, default decision (to keep a pris- come and motive are the same (Rachels, 2007). oner in prison) or a risky, difficult decision (to Indeed, basic linguistic structure attests to the grant a parole and allow the convict to rejoin importance of the active-passive dimension: ac- society, where he might commit a crime). Dan- tive versus passive verbs can express the same ziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso (2011) found thought often with substantially different mean- that judges granted parole at reasonably high This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ings (such as “Mistakes were made”). rates when the judges had been rested or fed, This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Depletion has often been understood as trans- but as the day wore on they became increasingly fer of control from conscious to unconscious, likely to favor the default response of denying from central executive to automatic (Hofmann, parole. Likewise, over the course of making Friese, & Strack, 2009). One way of summariz- many decisions while buying a car, buyers in- ing this diverse literature is to suggest that top- creasingly tend to select the standard or default down mental control is generally reduced or option (Levav, Heitmann, Herrmann, & Iyen- even abdicated during ego depletion. The view gar, 2010). Polman and Vohs (2016) confirmed that depletion brings abdication of control fits that decision fatigue is associated with prefer- many findings, such as increased yielding to ence for the status quo option. Banker, Ain- impulse (Hagger et al., 2010). The resource- sworth, Baumeister, Ariely, and Vohs (2017) EGO DEPLETION INDUCES MENTAL PASSIVITY 323 found that even when people’s decisions di- sive responding, in contrast to the more studied verge from the status quo, they diverge less effect of depletion increasing disinhibition. when people are depleted. In making decisions, Although many published studies support the then, depletion increases the tendency to stick claims of the limited resource model, the exis- close to a safe, default response. tence of the ego depletion effect has recently The limited resource model of self-regulation been disputed (Carter, Kofler, Forster, & Mc- suggests that people conserve resources by re- Cullough,
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