PSY 3109 Chapter Notes - Chapter 17: Ego Depletion, Brain Teaser, Controllability
15 May 2018
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Chapter 17: Ego Depletion- is the active self a limited resource?
Video: Resistance training for your willpower muscles
• Ego depletion audio
Marshmallow Experiment:
• Ability to control self-gratification at age 4 (Self-Control)
• Those who did not eat the marshmallow were more successful and those that did,
did not make it to university and had worse grades
Self-regulation is, at its root, really about the exercise of free will
o our ability to push ourselves to do things we are supposed to do and avoid
those that we arent
Ego Depletion: Whenever we deploy self-control processes, there is a cost; Baumeister
terms this ego depletion
• acts of self-control, even if they are vastly different from one another, all draw upon
the same common, finite pool of energy.
• Thus, an act of psychological exertion in one domain (Ex. eating a bad-tasting food)
can cause diminished performance in another, seemingly unrelated domain (Ex.
solving a brain teaser)
o Similar to exercising one muscle vigorously
Merryman (1952) showed that food-deprived rats showed a stronger fear response to
loud noises than satiated rats.
• That is, hunger appeared to produce a general vulnerability that transferred to non-
hunger related areas.
• Self-affirmation at a psychological level can prevent a range of negative effects at a
physiological level
Understand what emotions are and how they happen
Chapter 16: An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion
According to Weiner, there are at least two stages to the experience of many emotions—
especially those emotions that are uniquely human such as guilt or pride.
Step 1: the mind generates a primitive, primary appraisal of the event that has just
occurred, a labelling of the event in a relatively coarse manner. Was that good or bad?
Step 2: the mind begins to ask, What kind of good? or What kind of bad?
To answer that question, according to Weiner, requires a form of causal analysis.
That is, people ask What was the cause of the event that brought about this feeling?
Weiners remarkable insight was that it is possible to boil down the myriad of possible
answers to this question to only three dimensions:
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Video: resistance training for your willpower muscles: ego depletion audio. Marshmallow experiment: ability to control self-gratification at age 4 (self-control, those who did not eat the marshmallow were more successful and those that did, did not make it to university and had worse grades. Self-regulation is, at its root, really about the exercise of free will: our ability to push ourselves to do things we are supposed to do and avoid those that we aren(cid:495)t. Understand what emotions are and how they happen. Chapter 16: an attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion especially those emotions that are uniquely human such as guilt or pride. Step 1: the mind generates a primitive, primary appraisal of the event that has just. According to weiner, there are at least two stages to the experience of many emotions occurred, a labelling of the event in a relatively coarse manner. (cid:523)(cid:494)was that good or bad? (cid:495)(cid:524)
