Self-reports from behind the scenes: Questionable research practices and rates of replication in ego depletion research

PLoS One. 2018 Jun 25;13(6):e0199554. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199554. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

The strength model of self-control is one of the most influential and well-established models of self-regulation in social psychology. However, recent attempts to replicate the ego depletion effect have sometimes failed. The goal of this study is to investigate self-reported replication rates and the frequency of a set of questionable research practices (QRP) in ego depletion research. A literature search resulted in 1721 researchers who had previously published on ego depletion. They were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. The respondents (n = 277), on average, had published over three papers on ego depletion, and had completed more than two additional, unpublished studies. Respondents indicated that in more than 40% of their studies, results were similar in magnitude to those reported in the existing literature, and more than 60% reported conducting a priori power analyses. 39.2% of respondents were aware of other researchers who engaged in the surveyed QRP's, while 37.7% affirmed to have employed said QRP's. These results underline the importance of reducing QRP's to reliably test the validity of the ego depletion effect.

MeSH terms

  • Ego*
  • Humans
  • Models, Psychological*
  • Psychological Tests
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Research Design*
  • Research Personnel
  • Self Report*
  • Self-Control*

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.