The Undepleted Ego: Self-Regulatory Adaptation in Multiple Task Sequences

Working on a task that requires strong self-regulation can deteriorate performance in a subsequent task also involving high self-regulatory demands. Several studies suggest that the consumption of limited self-regulatory resources may account for this effect known as ego depletion. We investigated the influence of expectations about upcoming tasks on self-regulatory performance in two experiments, contrasting tasks with high and low self-regulatory demand. We manipulated expectations by informing participants about the number of tasks to be worked on (Experiment 1) and by varying the number of tasks (Experiment 2). With the expectation of highly demanding tasks no ego-depletion effect occurred. Results show that expecting a continuation of high self-regulatory demand in a sequence of several tasks actually improved performance.