On that note, it'd also be unwise to bet on the "ego depletion happens only to those who believe in it" finding from the paper I cited being replicate-able eith

On that note, it'd also be unwise to bet on the "ego depletion happens only to those who believe in it" finding from the paper I cited being replicate-able either -- it may be that the more broadly is no simple ego depletion effect effect at all. Psychology studies tend to be marred by the "piranha problem": you can't have a bunch of large effects determining behavior, without them eating each other.[1] We're immensely complicated, and make highly individual and nuanced decisions. There's just too much noise to try and boil things down to small patterns from simple studies. I believe (perhaps grounded weakly in largely anecdotal evidence) that people need to be able to fit their own behavior in some sort of personal narrative, or justify it in some way. Therefore, that the belief they "can't help" but do something they want to do (whether that be procrastinate or eat unhealthy food) will make it easier to justify, and thus the behaviors more likely. But there are as many different internal narratives, built on life experiences, as there are people. Making it hard to generalize surface level consequences between people. [1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2017/12/15/piranha-problem-social-psychology-behavioral-economics-button-pushing-model-science-eats/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2017/12/15/piranha-pr...