GROUP AS A PRIORITISATION SIGNAL: WORKING WITH SIMILAR OTHERS FACILITATES SELF-CONTROL FOLLOWING EGO DEPLETION

Abstract

Inspired by our innate need to belong and the successive use of self-control in daily life, the current thesis integrates the ego depletion and social categorisation literature to propose that the group serves as a prioritisation signal after prior use of self-control (i.e., depletion). Depleted and nondepleted participants were led to believe that they will be working on the Stroop task with similar others, dissimilar others, or without emphasising the group context. Study 1 and 2 revealed that only depleted participants were sensitive to the group manipulation. Depleted-similar others participants outperformed the remaining conditions even though all participants worked alone. Study 3 suggests that implicit but not explicit motivation might play a role in this facilitatory effect. Paralleling failed replication studies, no ego depletion effect was obtained. Such findings highlight the need to move beyond the ego depletion effect to consider other psychological processes that result from prior depletion.