Self-regulation failure is happened frequently on people struggling with obesity, drug abuse, violent crime, eating disorders, and so on.

Evidence indicates that recent assertions of self-control increase the likelihood of self-control failure. However, the process of self-control failure remains poorly understood.

Dr. GAO Wenbin’s group from Institute of Psychology found that perceived ego-depletion and mental effort play an essential role during goal adherence.

Results showed that people with high levels of chronic ego depletion performed more poorly in goal adherence, and paid more daily effort devoted to goal adherence. Besides, their behavioral performance was more reliant on mental effort (see Fig. 1). On the other hand, ego depletion did not influence people’s daily motivations to adhere to goals. These findings explained why people with strong internal motivation fail to exert self-control; that is, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Fig.1. Interaction of chronic ego depletion and daily mental effort in predicting the daily behavioral performance of individuals with at least 1 standard deviation above and below the mean on the SRF-S (1,491 daily assessments nested within 71 individuals).

This study employed sophisticated methodologies to extend prior work on the nature of resource depletion effects, and provided evidence with ecological validity regarding the process model of ego depletion.

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences Foundation of China (No. 31400885), the Key Laboratory of Mental Health (No. KLMH2014ZG12). 

The paper is now available online in PLOS ONE.