Ego Depletion Promotes Risk-Taking Behavior

DOU Kai; ZHE Yan-Gang; YU Yu-Ji; LI Jian-Bin

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1) : 150-155.

Ego Depletion Promotes Risk-Taking Behavior

Kai DOU¹,²,Yan-Gang Nie ⁴,Jian-Bin Li⁵

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Abstract

According to the strength model of self-control, self-control refers to limited capacity that people employ to override undesirable thoughts, emotions and behaviors. This model proposes that initial exertion of self-control consumes limited resources, which reduce performance of subsequent tasks involving self-control. This effect is called self-control resources depletion (aka. ego depletion). It further argues that ego depletion can be circumvented by a variety of approaches. The process of making decision is both influenced by analytic system and experiential system. It has been unraveled that analytic system is damaged by ego depletion, leading people to depend more on the experiential system to make a decision. Under this circumstance, people may fail in evaluating the risks and benefits, which promotes the occurrence of risk behaviors. Therefore, the current study assumes that ego depletion may promote risk behaviors. In addition, the present study also hypothesizes that having participants to drink lemonade mixed with glucose can alleviate the negative effect of ego depletion on risk-taking behavior than in the condition who have lemonade without glucose. Two experiments were designed to test these ideas. In experiment 1, a congruent or incongruent Stroop task was used to manipulate participants’ self-control resources. The rationale of this task is people should control the predominant tendency to name the word when they are required to speak aloud the color, which consumes a lot of self-control resources. After completing the Stroop task, participants were required to answer three manipulation checks and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) before working on the balloon analogue risk task (BART) which was to test their risk-taking behavior. In experiment 2, ego depletion was manipulated by a “writing with non-dominant hand” task. The rationale of this task is that right-handed people in this right-handed world have established a firm habitual of using their right hands. Thus it would be hard for them to use their non-dominant hand to do something (e.g., writing). Tremendous self-control resources have to be employed because they must exert self-control to complete such task. After finishing writing the paper, respondents were also asked to fill in three manipulation checks and the PANAS. Finally, they completed the BART after having a glass of beverage with or without approximately 400 calories. In both experiments, Trait Self-control Scale and Risk Preference Index were first administered to participants before they undertook the ego depletion tasks. After ruling out some possible intervening variables (e.g., trait self-control level, risk preference and mood), participants in the condition of high self-control resources depletion risked more to get greater reward than those in the condition of low self-control resources depletion (experiment 1 and 2). More important, when in the state of high self-control resources depletion, people who had beverage containing glucose risked less than those drinking the beverage without glucose (experiment 2), suggesting that supplementing physiological energy could effectively mitigate the negative effect of self-control resources depletion on risk-taking behavior. In sum, the present study demonstrated that ego depletion indeed promotes risk-taking behavior, and this effect can be moderated by physiological energy supplement.

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self-control resources / ego depletion / risk-taking behavior / physiological energy

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Kai DOU Yan-Gang Nie Jian-Bin Li. Ego Depletion Promotes Risk-Taking Behavior[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(1): 150-155

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