Dr. Kentaro Fujita

In other words, you should have a harder time stopping yourself from just reading the word.

Again, so if you've done the left-handed writing, then you make more mistakes and you are slower in your responses at the Stroop test.

That's what's known as the depletion effect, right, because I got tired, and so therefore my self-control is worse until it recharges.

So one of these multi-lab experiments, they try something like this using different tasks, but I've given you sort of an example of what kinds of experiments they run, and they could not replicate the depletion effect.

another multi lab experiment though smaller in scale and not by the original authors, they were able to get the depletion effect.

So, there's a little bit of just mixed evidence and it's not clear whether depletion really is a thing.

Now, let me say as a researcher myself, I'm in this really uncomfortable position where I actually think depletion is a real phenomenon because I experience it all the time in my own life.

Yet, I think the way that we have studied it in the lab hasn't been very good because much like the Walter Mischel studies, I don't think the original authors were very good at trying to explain what exactly you need.

What are the implicit decisions that they're making to set up this experiment that makes it work?

There have been some accusations of like cheating and monkeying with the data.

I don't know about that, but my own take on this is I think depletion is real.

I just don't think we figured out how to bottle it up in the lab.

We do know that people believe that self-control is depletable or at least willpower is depletable.

And the more you believe it, the more you show these patterns.

So there's amazing work by Veronica Jobe.

She has this little questionnaire that she asks, you know, if you engage in a strenuous task, do you feel recharged or do you feel more tired?

And those people who say they feel recharged act recharged after doing a really hard task.

So it's hard people doing hard things.

But for people who say that, no, I think it's exhausting, then when they're asked to do the experiment, they actually show the depletion effect.

So there's some evidence that people's lay beliefs about willpower might really play a key role in whether doing hard things makes you tired or whether doing hard things recharges you.