9 ms·

Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources (2013)

151 points by vharish 10y ago

astrange 10y ago
This article is about ego depletion theory, which is a little less popular these days: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/31/end-of-ego-depletion/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/31/en... Even if it is true, it's also using the original claims about glucose depletion, which would probably mean you were already addicted to sugar. Try getting a water drinking habit instead?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mrob 10y ago
"Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources." This is the Ego Depletion hypothesis. When the article was written in 2013 it seemed very likely to be true. In 2016 we're now aware of serious problems in many psychology studies, and while it's not definitely proven false, it's failed to replicate in enough studies that there's major doubt about it being a real effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_controversy_and_conflicting_meta_analyses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- conistonwater 10y ago
  > When the article was written in 2013 it seemed very likely to be true. I want to be pedantic about this and point out that this is a kind of a mistake. The issues that were present in the original studies were already "known", even if people didn't pay attention to that. It appears that even in 1967 it was already a thing: http://andrewgelman.com/2016/05/06/needed-an-intellectual-history-of-research-criticism-in-psychology/ http://andrewgelman.com/2016/05/06/needed-an-intellectual-hi... (discussing this article of Paul Meehl: http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/meehl1967.pdf http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me...) Since people didn't pay attention to the criticism, it's technically correct that the consensus was that it seemed likely to be true, but still…
  - acbabis 10y ago
    Good point. It is also technically correct to say "that it seemed likely not to be true"
- djsumdog 10y ago
  There was an NPR article I heard on this years ago: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140516974/resistance-training-for-your-willpower-muscles http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140516974/resistance-training-...
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  The problem with saying ego depletion isn't a thing may still be false. I personally have a limited amount of "give a fuck". If I run out of fucks to give, well, that's the end of the story. I know exactly how many fucks I can give per day, and I suspect all of this is what they call ego depletion. So, claiming it doesn't exist simply doesn't align with my own personal experience. Most likely, it is more subtle than current scientific testing can account for.
  - nikatwork 10y ago
    And if I push myself to give more fucks per day I find it easier to maintain that level over time... I think of it as building momentum, others think of it as exercising the willpower muscle. Ego depletion could be a "just so" story but I still think it's an interesting/useful model.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Another interesting and possibly germane question is: what happens when you find yourself giving fucks you didn't mean to? And another: what happens when you find your fucks getting stolen?
      - jpindar 10y ago
        Burnout.
        nerdponx 10y ago
        Legit answer. Source: personal experience
        Xorlev 10y ago
        Not sure why you're being downvoted, I can attest to this. There's only a certain amount of care you can give at a steady state (though, this does _seem_ to be able to increase, like a muscle at least for me personally). That said, if I work it too hard for too long with too much stress I experience burnout. Burnout, as mentioned many many times by people far more eloquent than I, has different levels. Can be mild, can be major malfunction. Stay frosty, folks. Make your attention count.
technobabble 10y ago
Wouldn't this study show that we as humans are not multitaskers? To go with the example, what would happen if the people were given a longer break in between the memorization task and choosing the reward?
- divbit 10y ago
  I like to think that if I can do a task semi-competently (say competence level N_task) with a full coffee of focus, then I can do two tasks (task_1, and task_2) with the same amount of coffee at a competence level of A * N_task_1, (1-A) * N_task_2. where A is a number between 0 and 1 representing the percentage of focus on task_1. (Disclaimer: not even close to a psychologist or someone who knows anything about this stuff)
  - jerf 10y ago
    You may like to think it, but the evidence is strongly in the direction of you taking a very significant penalty. Even computers don't get perfect utilization in a multitasking environment and they're way better at task switching than we are.
    - divbit 10y ago
      got any links? I did just google this, as efficiency is a topic I find interesting
      - jerf 10y ago
        https://duckduckgo.com/?q=human+multitasking+efficiency https://duckduckgo.com/?q=human+multitasking+efficiency This is NOT just a "let me google that for you" reply; I selected the search term carefully. (LMGTFY is for when the search is trivially obvious.) I'd also suggest that the common experience of many professionals in the field matches what the studies show. Note that in theory, the formulation that "A * N_task_1, (1-A) * N_task_2. where A is a number between 0 and 1 representing the percentage of focus on task_1" implies that you must be 100% efficient in task switches, which you can easily disprove simply by trying to switch back and forth every second, or exactly precisely splitting your attention continuously. Again, even computers can "thrash" and spend all their time changing tasks in certain bad cases. See also "queuing theory", which can put some math on this, and is useful for almost any HN denizen anyhow.
throwanem 10y ago
It's true that ego depletion has a question mark over it these days. It's also true that Sierra's conclusion has value: > ...I've created interactive marketing games, gamified sites (before it was called that), and dozens of other projects carefully, artfully, scientifically designed to slurp (gulp) cognitive resources for... very little that was "worth it". Did people willingly choose to engage with them? Of course. And by "of course" I mean, not really, no. Not according to psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics research of the past 50 years. They were nudged/seduced/tricked. And I was pretty good at it. I am so very, very sorry. > My goal for Serious Pony is to help all of us take better care of our users. Not just while they are interacting with our app, site, product, but after. Not just because they are our users, but because they are people. ...nah, it'll never catch on. Where's the value prop here?
- sitkack 10y ago
  I can't use Adobe products for any serious amount of time, they induce rage followed by narcolepsy. I give the theory some credence, but I wouldn't call it "ego depletion". The mechanism I think consumes glucose in the brain 'the fucks' and once exhausted can't be replenished without rest.
  - nnq 10y ago
    Ha! Same for me. Even hated the news of them buying Fireworks... good insight as they eventually killed it. But once you learn the keyboard shortcuts and start to think in terms of "what group of things would I want to manipulate / apply the same effect / transformation, to all at the same time" instead of "how things make logical sense to be grouped together", and also "what tasks are more common for real-life professionals using this program" instead of "where would that option make sense to be based on what it actually does". There are 2 UX/I games to play: (1) improve the UXI for current professional users that you know will pay for your product, and rely on professional network effects for growth, and (2) improve the UXI for new users, optimizing for adoptions, but accept that lots of the new users will never be "professional" users, will never pay a lot of money for it, and some of their feature requests will be expensive to develop but will result in no increased profit. Hint: Adobe is obviously playing game #1 and they are also slaves to their past mistakes, and on top of that their current user base includes a huge number of "artsy, not so logical, and profoundly change-averse" users. Hence all their products can only induce rage and/or mind-numbness in people like us :)
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
(2013) damn, I was hoping that Kathy Sierra was back.
- throwanem 10y ago
  If I were her, I'd want to spend my time with horses too.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    ...and in case my prior is insufficiently clear, what I mean by it is that, if people had come after me the way they went after her, I'd get the hell out of the industry, too. That she did so is a grave loss to our field. That she had reason to do so is an indictment. Besides, horses are great. Huge and kind of inherently a little bonkers and occasionally mean as dirt, but they're also powerful, beautiful creatures. I can imagine finding a lot of solace there.
orky56 10y ago
I believe passion/purpose/etc. is what allows us to forgo the limited resources of cognition/executive function. If we can convince ourselves that we actually want to do something, the fatigue of decision making becomes drastically reduced and we can do things we don't even want to.
vinceguidry 10y ago
I started a new job a few months ago. For the first month or so I was coming home really tired. I needed a half-hour or so nap before I could leave my house after I got home. I eventually worked out that I was stressing myself out. So I started going into work with the express purpose of caring less. If I couldn't do a thing, I would give myself permission to relax, take a break, or ask for help. The problem was instantly solved. Like, a total night and day difference in how I felt after work. I got better at getting things done, too.
- zeta0134 10y ago
  This is part of why I'm so annoyed by the push for metrics at my service oriented company. Fortunately our company culture is such that my managers understand (and encourage) the need for frequent breaks and lightheartedness. If I had to just focus on the task at hand 100% of my day, I'd burn out within a few weeks. The relaxed attitude also helps me get a sense for how urgent a particular day actually is. There's 150 tasks in the queue? Ehh, I probably shouldn't have YouTube going today, but I don't need to panic. Oh, now there's 1,500 tasks in the queue? Suddenly we had an emergency; sit up straight, focus, and figure out what needs to be done right now. And you know? That's awesome. The 100% focus time can come and go in bursts; I've had to work entire days in focus time when we were having a really tough time about things, but then we get the problem solved, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and we can all step back a bit and reorganize, and think about how better to handle that situation, and what we can do to avoid it. We aren't ever drowned out by a constantly busy schedule.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    > I'm so annoyed by the push for metrics at my service oriented company. I saw it here on HN, from someone else and I remembered these quotes: 1) Just because it can be turned into a number, doesn't it mean that it should be. 2) Just because something has already been turned into o a number it doesn't mean it is important. Usually managers will want to turn everything into a number. Number of tickets closed per iteration cycles, numbe of issues opened, number of lines written, number of comments per number of lines and so on. Because they think those give them a deep insight into the team dynamics, and it makes their job more justifiable because they can use those "statistics" and present them to their manager instead of say wave their hands and say "yap it's fine, we shipped this feature, found some bugs, fixed them".
InternetPerson 10y ago
Is "ego depletion" the only explanation for the experiment? How do the researchers rule out other explanations? Maybe people choose the cake because they think, "Phew! I did something difficult! I deserve some cake!" And the people who only memorized two numbers think, "Well, I didn't do anything that warrants cake. I'll just take the salad." I don't mean to propose this as an alternate explanation -- it just seems like there could be a million explanations for why people are more likely to choose the cake. (But maybe the researchers found ways to rule them out?) Another random question -- have people replicated this experiment? Just curious.
ramblenode 10y ago
FYI, this is based on the "ego depletion" theory, which has been criticized. An excellent lay overview of this debate: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story...
rrecuero 10y ago
If you want to read more about it, David Kahneman talks about the cake experiment in 'Thinking fast and slow'. His findings can be summarized as Ego depletion.
- n1000 10y ago
  Daniel Kahneman. Great book.
  - rrecuero 10y ago
    Thanks :) Don't know how I got the name switched.
rrecuero 10y ago
If you want to read more about it, Michael Kahneman talks about the cake experiment in 'Thinking fast and slow'. His findings can be summarized as Ego depletion.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. Or, the people who were randomly assigned to the two-digit memorisation group just happened to prefer fruit over cake. Drawing any kind of conclusion about "willpower" (whatever that is) from the fact that some people chose cake and some chose fruit is so far fetched that it makes the headline sound comical.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>”You know where this goes: the dogs that had to sit — exercising self-control — gave up on the puzzle much earlier than the dogs that were just hanging out in their crate.The dogs that were NOT burning cognitive resources being obedient had more determination and mental/emotional energy for solving the puzzle. Think about that next time you ask Sparky to be patient. His cognitive resources are easily-depleted too." // I'd have thought a better hypothesis was that the dog that it's free has other options for how to spend their time. The incarcerated dog doesn't have anything else to do. So whilst in both cases they maybe realise they can't get the treat - evil humans - the dog in the cage only has alternatives asking the lines of 'lick scrotum'. If you lock me in a cage and give me a Rubic cube then I'm not going to be able to go down the pub instead.

151 points by vharish 10y ago

This article is about ego depletion theory, which is a little less popular these days: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/31/end-of-ego-depletion/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/31/en... Even if it is true, it's also using the original claims about glucose depletion, which would probably mean you were already addicted to sugar. Try getting a water drinking habit instead?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

mrob 10y ago

"Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources." This is the Ego Depletion hypothesis. When the article was written in 2013 it seemed very likely to be true. In 2016 we're now aware of serious problems in many psychology studies, and while it's not definitely proven false, it's failed to replicate in enough studies that there's major doubt about it being a real effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_controversy_and_conflicting_meta_analyses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

conistonwater 10y ago
> When the article was written in 2013 it seemed very likely to be true. I want to be pedantic about this and point out that this is a kind of a mistake. The issues that were present in the original studies were already "known", even if people didn't pay attention to that. It appears that even in 1967 it was already a thing: http://andrewgelman.com/2016/05/06/needed-an-intellectual-history-of-research-criticism-in-psychology/ http://andrewgelman.com/2016/05/06/needed-an-intellectual-hi... (discussing this article of Paul Meehl: http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/meehl1967.pdf http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me...) Since people didn't pay attention to the criticism, it's technically correct that the consensus was that it seemed likely to be true, but still…
- acbabis 10y ago
  Good point. It is also technically correct to say "that it seemed likely not to be true"
djsumdog 10y ago
There was an NPR article I heard on this years ago: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140516974/resistance-training-for-your-willpower-muscles http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140516974/resistance-training-...
DiabloD3 10y ago
The problem with saying ego depletion isn't a thing may still be false. I personally have a limited amount of "give a fuck". If I run out of fucks to give, well, that's the end of the story. I know exactly how many fucks I can give per day, and I suspect all of this is what they call ego depletion. So, claiming it doesn't exist simply doesn't align with my own personal experience. Most likely, it is more subtle than current scientific testing can account for.
- nikatwork 10y ago
  And if I push myself to give more fucks per day I find it easier to maintain that level over time... I think of it as building momentum, others think of it as exercising the willpower muscle. Ego depletion could be a "just so" story but I still think it's an interesting/useful model.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Another interesting and possibly germane question is: what happens when you find yourself giving fucks you didn't mean to? And another: what happens when you find your fucks getting stolen?
    - jpindar 10y ago
      Burnout.
      - nerdponx 10y ago
        Legit answer. Source: personal experience
        Xorlev 10y ago
        Not sure why you're being downvoted, I can attest to this. There's only a certain amount of care you can give at a steady state (though, this does _seem_ to be able to increase, like a muscle at least for me personally). That said, if I work it too hard for too long with too much stress I experience burnout. Burnout, as mentioned many many times by people far more eloquent than I, has different levels. Can be mild, can be major malfunction. Stay frosty, folks. Make your attention count.

technobabble 10y ago

Wouldn't this study show that we as humans are not multitaskers? To go with the example, what would happen if the people were given a longer break in between the memorization task and choosing the reward?

divbit 10y ago
I like to think that if I can do a task semi-competently (say competence level N_task) with a full coffee of focus, then I can do two tasks (task_1, and task_2) with the same amount of coffee at a competence level of A * N_task_1, (1-A) * N_task_2. where A is a number between 0 and 1 representing the percentage of focus on task_1. (Disclaimer: not even close to a psychologist or someone who knows anything about this stuff)
- jerf 10y ago
  You may like to think it, but the evidence is strongly in the direction of you taking a very significant penalty. Even computers don't get perfect utilization in a multitasking environment and they're way better at task switching than we are.
  - divbit 10y ago
    got any links? I did just google this, as efficiency is a topic I find interesting
    - jerf 10y ago
      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=human+multitasking+efficiency https://duckduckgo.com/?q=human+multitasking+efficiency This is NOT just a "let me google that for you" reply; I selected the search term carefully. (LMGTFY is for when the search is trivially obvious.) I'd also suggest that the common experience of many professionals in the field matches what the studies show. Note that in theory, the formulation that "A * N_task_1, (1-A) * N_task_2. where A is a number between 0 and 1 representing the percentage of focus on task_1" implies that you must be 100% efficient in task switches, which you can easily disprove simply by trying to switch back and forth every second, or exactly precisely splitting your attention continuously. Again, even computers can "thrash" and spend all their time changing tasks in certain bad cases. See also "queuing theory", which can put some math on this, and is useful for almost any HN denizen anyhow.

throwanem 10y ago

It's true that ego depletion has a question mark over it these days. It's also true that Sierra's conclusion has value: > ...I've created interactive marketing games, gamified sites (before it was called that), and dozens of other projects carefully, artfully, scientifically designed to slurp (gulp) cognitive resources for... very little that was "worth it". Did people willingly choose to engage with them? Of course. And by "of course" I mean, not really, no. Not according to psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics research of the past 50 years. They were nudged/seduced/tricked. And I was pretty good at it. I am so very, very sorry. > My goal for Serious Pony is to help all of us take better care of our users. Not just while they are interacting with our app, site, product, but after. Not just because they are our users, but because they are people. ...nah, it'll never catch on. Where's the value prop here?

sitkack 10y ago
I can't use Adobe products for any serious amount of time, they induce rage followed by narcolepsy. I give the theory some credence, but I wouldn't call it "ego depletion". The mechanism I think consumes glucose in the brain 'the fucks' and once exhausted can't be replenished without rest.
- nnq 10y ago
  Ha! Same for me. Even hated the news of them buying Fireworks... good insight as they eventually killed it. But once you learn the keyboard shortcuts and start to think in terms of "what group of things would I want to manipulate / apply the same effect / transformation, to all at the same time" instead of "how things make logical sense to be grouped together", and also "what tasks are more common for real-life professionals using this program" instead of "where would that option make sense to be based on what it actually does". There are 2 UX/I games to play: (1) improve the UXI for current professional users that you know will pay for your product, and rely on professional network effects for growth, and (2) improve the UXI for new users, optimizing for adoptions, but accept that lots of the new users will never be "professional" users, will never pay a lot of money for it, and some of their feature requests will be expensive to develop but will result in no increased profit. Hint: Adobe is obviously playing game #1 and they are also slaves to their past mistakes, and on top of that their current user base includes a huge number of "artsy, not so logical, and profoundly change-averse" users. Hence all their products can only induce rage and/or mind-numbness in people like us :)

aaronbrethorst 10y ago

(2013) damn, I was hoping that Kathy Sierra was back.

throwanem 10y ago
If I were her, I'd want to spend my time with horses too.
- throwanem 10y ago
  ...and in case my prior is insufficiently clear, what I mean by it is that, if people had come after me the way they went after her, I'd get the hell out of the industry, too. That she did so is a grave loss to our field. That she had reason to do so is an indictment. Besides, horses are great. Huge and kind of inherently a little bonkers and occasionally mean as dirt, but they're also powerful, beautiful creatures. I can imagine finding a lot of solace there.

orky56 10y ago

I believe passion/purpose/etc. is what allows us to forgo the limited resources of cognition/executive function. If we can convince ourselves that we actually want to do something, the fatigue of decision making becomes drastically reduced and we can do things we don't even want to.

vinceguidry 10y ago

I started a new job a few months ago. For the first month or so I was coming home really tired. I needed a half-hour or so nap before I could leave my house after I got home. I eventually worked out that I was stressing myself out. So I started going into work with the express purpose of caring less. If I couldn't do a thing, I would give myself permission to relax, take a break, or ask for help. The problem was instantly solved. Like, a total night and day difference in how I felt after work. I got better at getting things done, too.

zeta0134 10y ago
This is part of why I'm so annoyed by the push for metrics at my service oriented company. Fortunately our company culture is such that my managers understand (and encourage) the need for frequent breaks and lightheartedness. If I had to just focus on the task at hand 100% of my day, I'd burn out within a few weeks. The relaxed attitude also helps me get a sense for how urgent a particular day actually is. There's 150 tasks in the queue? Ehh, I probably shouldn't have YouTube going today, but I don't need to panic. Oh, now there's 1,500 tasks in the queue? Suddenly we had an emergency; sit up straight, focus, and figure out what needs to be done right now. And you know? That's awesome. The 100% focus time can come and go in bursts; I've had to work entire days in focus time when we were having a really tough time about things, but then we get the problem solved, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and we can all step back a bit and reorganize, and think about how better to handle that situation, and what we can do to avoid it. We aren't ever drowned out by a constantly busy schedule.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > I'm so annoyed by the push for metrics at my service oriented company. I saw it here on HN, from someone else and I remembered these quotes: 1) Just because it can be turned into a number, doesn't it mean that it should be. 2) Just because something has already been turned into o a number it doesn't mean it is important. Usually managers will want to turn everything into a number. Number of tickets closed per iteration cycles, numbe of issues opened, number of lines written, number of comments per number of lines and so on. Because they think those give them a deep insight into the team dynamics, and it makes their job more justifiable because they can use those "statistics" and present them to their manager instead of say wave their hands and say "yap it's fine, we shipped this feature, found some bugs, fixed them".

InternetPerson 10y ago

Is "ego depletion" the only explanation for the experiment? How do the researchers rule out other explanations? Maybe people choose the cake because they think, "Phew! I did something difficult! I deserve some cake!" And the people who only memorized two numbers think, "Well, I didn't do anything that warrants cake. I'll just take the salad." I don't mean to propose this as an alternate explanation -- it just seems like there could be a million explanations for why people are more likely to choose the cake. (But maybe the researchers found ways to rule them out?) Another random question -- have people replicated this experiment? Just curious.

ramblenode 10y ago

FYI, this is based on the "ego depletion" theory, which has been criticized. An excellent lay overview of this debate: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story...

rrecuero 10y ago

If you want to read more about it, David Kahneman talks about the cake experiment in 'Thinking fast and slow'. His findings can be summarized as Ego depletion.

n1000 10y ago
Daniel Kahneman. Great book.
- rrecuero 10y ago
  Thanks :) Don't know how I got the name switched.

rrecuero 10y ago

If you want to read more about it, Michael Kahneman talks about the cake experiment in 'Thinking fast and slow'. His findings can be summarized as Ego depletion.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. Or, the people who were randomly assigned to the two-digit memorisation group just happened to prefer fruit over cake. Drawing any kind of conclusion about "willpower" (whatever that is) from the fact that some people chose cake and some chose fruit is so far fetched that it makes the headline sound comical.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

>”You know where this goes: the dogs that had to sit — exercising self-control — gave up on the puzzle much earlier than the dogs that were just hanging out in their crate.The dogs that were NOT burning cognitive resources being obedient had more determination and mental/emotional energy for solving the puzzle. Think about that next time you ask Sparky to be patient. His cognitive resources are easily-depleted too." // I'd have thought a better hypothesis was that the dog that it's free has other options for how to spend their time. The incarcerated dog doesn't have anything else to do. So whilst in both cases they maybe realise they can't get the treat - evil humans - the dog in the cage only has alternatives asking the lines of 'lick scrotum'. If you lock me in a cage and give me a Rubic cube then I'm not going to be able to go down the pub instead.