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Abstract
In retrospect, the decision to use new, mostly untested procedures1 for a large replication project was foolish. When planning the Registered Replication Report (RRR) on ego depletion (Hagger et al., 2016, this issue), Hagger asked Baumeister for suggestions. Baumeister nominated several procedures that have been used in successful studies of ego depletion for years. But none of Baumeister’s suggestions were allowable due to the RRR restrictions that it must be done with only computerized tasks that were culturally and linguistically neutral. Discussions were stalemated, and we felt pressured to come up with something quickly. We learned of a new study by Sripada et al. (2014) that fit the requirements and passed this along to the RRR team. Since there were no viable other options, that method was chosen. Apparently it matters how much we endorsed this method. To be clear, no one working in either of our laboratories has ever used this procedure in any study (neither the manipulation nor dependent measure). We still do not understand why reaction time variance is a measure of self-control failure (are people overriding some impulse to react with variable speed?), but the idea of “replication” requires that something like the task has been used at least once, and the Sripada et al. paper reported successful results in a major outlet. (Perhaps we should have still objected. But because there were no other viable options, objecting would have meant objecting to the entire RRR, which could have been interpreted as lack of trust in the effect.) Under the circumstances, we understood our approval to mean “Sure, go ahead” and not “Yes, that’s a definitive test of the phenomenon we’ve been studying all these years.” Crucially, we thought the robustness of ego depletion effects would overcome any weaknesses in this new method. That was an unfortunate mistake, partly because the weaknesses seem more serious than we had understood.
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