The Reduction of Ego-Depletion

In commentaries on the replication effort, some concerns were noted. The original study authors, led by Chandra Sripada noted that some small differences between the original study and the replication efforts might have influenced results. That’s a fair point, but, at best, suggests that ego-depletion is a fragile process, not one that can be easily applied to a wide variety of circumstances as it has been. Baumeister and colleague Katherine Vohs, commented that, in effect, they sorta agreed to the replication effort but not really. They state “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.’” They complain that several other procedures they had suggested were rejected by the replication labs. I’m less convinced by this commentary which feels a bit more after-the-fact sour grapes. Any concerns should have been clearly registered before the replication study, not after results were known. As they note, they thought that ego-depletion effects were robust enough that even the Sripada method should work… if it does not, even if one method doesn’t represent all of ego-depletion, that’s still notable.