The Self at Work: Fundamental Theory and Research

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Russell E. Johnson, Mark Muraven, Tina L. Donaldson, and Szu-Han (Joanna) Lin

In other chapters in this volume, authors discuss the importance of regulating various self-referenced identities, goals, needs, motives, emotions, and behaviors. To do so, it requires that employees have sufficient self-control at their disposal. However, this may not always be the case, especially when employees feel depleted from prior instances of suppressing thoughts, emotions, or behaviors. In this chapter we review foundational research on self-control and ego depletion theory, and how this work has informed investigations of employee self-control and depletion at work. We conclude with discussions of some of the challenges facing this line of research and fruitful directions for future research.

Overview of Self-Control and Ego Depletion Theory

It seems counterintuitive that refraining from a task would use energy. However, recent research has found that when people exert self-control they may become fatigued and perform worse on later attempts at self-control (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). To understand these results, an energy model of self-control has been put forth. This model of self-control suggests that in order to override an impulse, stop a behavior, or change a mood or thought, people need to exert effort and energy. If they do not expend this energy, they will give into temptation or continue their present action. In other words, this energy or resource (often called self-control strength) is necessary for any and all acts of agency.

Even more importantly, people seem to act as if this self-control strength is limited (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994) and that it is depleted in the process of exerting self-control (Muraven, Baumeister, & Tice, 1999). For example, whenever people exert self-control in order to make difficult or complex decisions, cope with stress, sustain attention, or restrain impulses, they draw upon this common reserve, which is analogous to mental energy or strength. Exerting self-control therefore depletes this mental energy or strength, so after exerting self-control, people have less strength until they are able to replenish it. This state of reduced energy or strength has profound implications for current self-control performance because the success of self-control depends upon an individual’s level of self-control strength at that moment (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). These notions that mental energy or strength is needed for successful self-control, that people treat this energy or strength as if it is limited, and that it may be reduced or consumed in the process of exerting self-control form the foundation of ego depletion theory and research.

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Research on Ego Depletion

Consistent with the idea that the resource underlying self-control is treated as if it is limited and depletable, resisting temptation and delaying satisfaction appear to result in a temporary decline in this resource (ego depletion; Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998). When self-control strength is depleted through acts of volition, research has shown that people exhibit diminished performance on subsequent self-control efforts. The energy expenditure on the first task appears to leave the self-control strength depleted and thus there is less energy readily available for future endeavors. In short, when an individual is in an ego-depleted state they are consequently more prone to self-control failure.

A seminal study conducted by Baumeister and colleagues (1998) offered initial support for the ego depletion effect. In this experiment the participants were told they would be taking part in a taste perception test. When they arrived at the lab, they had not eaten anything for at least three hours. On the table at which participants were seated were two bowls: one bowl was filled with chocolate chip cookies and chocolate candies whereas the second bowl was filled with red and white radishes. The chocolate chip cookies were baked in the room just moments before their arrival, leaving a delicious aroma. Some of the participants were told to help themselves to the chocolate chip cookies and chocolate candies, whereas others were instructed to only eat the radishes. After several minutes passed, all participants had to exert self-control on a difficult problem-solving task for as long as they wanted (unbeknownst to participants, there was no solution to the problem). Continuing to work on such an intractable problem requires self-control to overcome negative feelings and the desire to quit, so people who worked longer on the problem were assumed to have greater self-control capacity.

Results showed that the participants who were instructed to eat only radishes persisted less than half the amount of time compared to those who ate the chocolate chip cookies and candies. Statistically controlling for mood, arousal, and frustration did not alter these results, suggesting that the differences in self-control performance cannot be attributed to these factors. These results are consistent with the idea that an internal resource had been utilized or depleted through the process of restraining the desires to eat a tempting food (Baumeister et al., 1998).

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Other studies have established the specificity of the ego depletion model. That is, the amount of self-control exerted on the initial task is the only factor that is related to subsequent changes in performance. For example, in a study on the regulation of alcohol intake, social drinkers were asked to pick up and sniff a glass containing their favorite alcohol beverage but not drink it (Muraven & Shmueli, 2006). Cue exposure tasks are frequently used as tests of self-control (Tang, Posner, Rothbart, & Volkow, 2015), thus these instructions should have depleted participants’ self-control strength. The results of this investigation showed that the stronger the temptation to drink the alcohol (and hence the more self-control exerted), the more poorly participants performed on subsequent tests of self-control.

The effects of depletion are also limited only to acts that require self-control. Depletion has no effect on behaviors that do not require stopping or inhibiting a behavior or changing a thought or feeling. For instance, performance on a Stroop test where the ink color and word do not match is affected by depletion (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). However, when the ink color and word do match, thus requiring little or no mental control, response speed is not related to prior self-control efforts (Muraven, Shmueli, & Burkley, 2006). In other words, ego depletion has no effect on tasks that do not require self-control.

Intriguingly, there is evidence for this depletion effect in animals as well. Several studies have found evidence for reduced self-control performance in dogs after resisting a temptation (Miller & Bender, 2012; Miller, DeWall, Pattison, Molet, & Zentall, 2012; Miller, Pattison, DeWall, Rayburn-Reeves, & Zentall, 2010). The fact that depletion occurs in animals without (presumably) complex selves has important implications for understanding the processes underlying the depletion effect.

It is important to note that recently there has been some focus on the reliability of these effects. Although this theory has been the basis of many published studies carried out in numerous labs around the world (estimates suggests over 1,000 papers based on this theory), there has been some well-publicized failures to replicate the results as well. For example, a recent meta-analysis of 198 independent tests of the ego depletion effect (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010) found the effect to be medium to large in size. However, a competing meta-analysis (Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015) argued that this meta-analysis overweighed studies with small samples. After correcting for that, they found evidence for publication bias and concluded the actual effect size for the depletion model was null. This claim implies that a large number of papers reporting null or negative effect remain unpublished, although the original meta-analysis (Hagger et al., 2010) calculated that there would need to be nearly 50,000 unpublished studies to bring the published effect size back to zero (for additional commentary, see Cunningham & Baumeister, 2016).

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A recent study using standardized methods and multiple labs around the world also failed to find an effect (Hagger & Chatzisarantis, 2016). This many lab approach was criticized for using a manipulation that, although similar to previous methods, was not validated in prior studies (Baumeister & Vohs, 2016). Such a large sample should have been able to detect small effects, even if the manipulation was poor, however. Regardless, it is clear that much more research is needed using a wide variety of methods to fully elucidate the boundaries of this model and to explain why there may be instances where the depletion effect is not observed.

Moderators of Depletion

Fortunately, research investigating some of the boundary conditions and moderators of the depletion effect have begun to emerge. These variables are important at both the basic and applied levels, as they help inform theories of self-control depletion. They also point the way to potential interventions to help mitigate the effects of depletion on self-control performance.

One critical factor that seems to moderate the effects of depletion is motivation. Evidence suggests that people are mainly unaware of their level of depletion and may not be aware that they need to compensate for the decrease in their performance (Clarkson, Hirt, Jia, & Alexander, 2010). However, if people are aware of their level of depletion, then it may be possible for them to take corrective action (e.g., seek rest to replenish). Importantly, self-awareness has also been shown to improve self-regulation by increasing motivation and adherence to goals (Carver & Scheier, 1998). Consistent with these ideas, increasing self-awareness tends to help negate the negative effects of depletion (Alberts, Martijn, & de Vries, 2011; Voce & Moston, 2016). That is, people who engage in self-control (and thus should be depleted) but who are made to increase their self-awareness perform as well on self-control tasks as people who are not depleted at all.

Proper incentives may also provide people with an increase in motivation, which has been shown to attenuate the effects of depletion (Ryan & Deci, 2000; Muraven & Slessareva, 2003). In an experiment where depleted participants believed their efforts would benefit either themselves or others, their performance on subsequent self-control tasks was superior to depleted participants with less motivation (Muraven & Slessareva, 2003). As will be discussed later, this suggests that ego depletion does not necessarily result in the inability to exert self-control – even depleted people can exert self-control if sufficiently motivated. This also suggests that external contingencies can help people overcome depletion, which highlights potential ways to reduce the impact of depletion on performance.

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Besides external contingencies, research has suggested that the type of motivation also affects self-control performance. For example, intrinsically motivated and self-determined behavior may be less depleting than feeling obliged to exert self-control (Muraven, Gagné, & Rosman, 2008). In three experiments, it was found that when participants felt supported during acts requiring self-control they performed better than participants who felt pressure to perform (Muraven et al., 2008). Furthermore, research has found that when dieting, those who were intrinsically motivated were more successful at weight loss than people who were extrinsically motivated (Muraven, 2008). After controlling for anxiety, mood, stress, and reduced motivation, feelings of autonomy – a key ingredient of intrinsic motivation – appear to mitigate the effects of depletion. In other words, exerting self-control for personal, intrinsic reasons is less depleting than exerting self-control for extrinsic reasons.

Finally, the nature of the self-control acts likely matters. For example, the automatization of behavior should decrease cognitive demand and thus may reduce the resources required for self-control (Webb & Sheeran, 2003). Implementation intentions, or pre-commitment to a goal, set a plan in place that specifies how, when, and where a goal will be accomplished. Such intentions automatize self-controlled behavior by creating associations of goal-directed actions with critical cues in the environment. For example, someone who wants to lose weight may say to him- or herself: “If I have a craving for chocolate cake, then I will go for a walk instead.” Consistent with these ideas, having an if–then plan in place eases self-control demands and increases the likelihood of successfully achieving the desired goal (Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005). Compared to those who had an implementation intention, participants who had no such intention or plan were more depleted by self-control activity.

The framing of the self-control tasks likely matters as well. If people perceive a task as difficult and their expectancy for success is low, performance on the task may be more affected by depletion than if they perceived the task as easy (Giacomantonio, Ten Velden, & De Dreu, 2016). In instances where success is unlikely, there is little incentive for people to invest additional effort to counteract the effects of depletion. Whether activities are framed in terms of success and approaching desired states versus in terms of failure and avoiding feared states also has implications for depletion. Avoidance-oriented tasks cause people to divide their attention amongst all possible obstacles (real and imagined) that might lead to failure (Carver & Scheier, 1998), which produces high self-control demands. Approach-oriented tasks, in contrast, are less demanding because attention is exclusively focused on movement toward the desired goal state. In short, the same activity or behavior may be more or less depleting, depending on how a person approaches it. There is a need for much more work on how perception and mindset of self-control activities affects levels of depletion.

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The Flip-Side of Depletion: Replenishment

If people act as though self-control is a limited resource that gets depleted, there must be ways to replenish that lost energy. Although it has not been extensively investigated, there is some evidence that rest helps people recover lost energy. For example, research has linked self-reports of poor sleep or fatigue with poorer self-control (Barnes, Schaubroeck, Huth, & Ghumman, 2011; Ghumman & Barnes, 2013). More directly, periods of rest after a depleting activity have been found to lead to improved self-control performance (Tyler & Burns, 2008).

There may be more direct and rapid ways to recover lost resources as well. Positive affect has received the most attention in this regard. People who were depleted through a self-control exercise and then experienced a positive event performed as well as non-depleted people on a self-control test and much better than people who were depleted and experienced a neutral and distracting event (Tice et al., 2007). Other positive experiences such as self-affirmation (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009), mindfulness meditation (Friese, Messner, & Schaffner, 2012), and even being outside (Chow & Lau, 2015; Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009) have been shown to help replenish lost self-control. The fact that intrinsic motivation leads to more positive affect and feelings of vitality may help to explain why people who are intrinsically motivated to exert self-control exhibit less depletion than people who are extrinsically motivated (Moller, Deci, & Ryan, 2006; Muraven et al., 2008).

The mechanism underlying replenishment effects is less clear. Positive affect may increase motivation, much as incentives do. If that is the case, the underlying depletion may remain and return or possibly worsen after the motivation is gone (much like drinking coffee can increase wakefulness for a while but ultimately sleep is needed). On the other hand, positive experience may truly lead to a return of lost strength. As will be discussed further, the answer to that question may help in understanding the nature of the resource itself.

Building Self-Control Through Practice

Finally, research has suggested that self-control can be strengthened through practice. Much like exercising a muscle fatigues it and leads to poorer performance in the short term but greater strength and endurance in the long term, exercising self-control may have a similar effect. In the short term, self-control may get worse immediately after exerting self-control, but the regular practice of self-control interspersed with rest may produce relatively enduring gains in self-control capacity. Consistent with this idea, research suggests that practicing small acts of self-control can lead to better self-control performance overall (Muraven, 2010; Muraven, Baumeister, & Tice, 1999; Oaten & Cheng, 2006).

Interestingly, the benefits of practice are not domain exclusive, such that practicing self-control in one area (e.g., physical fitness) will translate into better self-control in other areas (e.g., emotion regulation). For example, Muraven (2010) assigned smokers who were interested in quitting to either practice self-control or to a control group where they practiced a task that did not require self-control. After practicing their assigned task for two weeks, they quit smoking. Those who previously practiced self-control remained abstinent longer than those who did not practice self-control. Notably, participants in the control condition worked on tasks that were designed to increase their feelings of self-efficacy, increase self-awareness, make them think about self-control, and engage in self-monitoring, yet none of these variables were related to the subsequent ability to quit smoking. Only the amount of self-control actually exerted during the practice phase was related to the ability to quit smoking.

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Organizational Research on Self-Control and Ego Depletion

As reviewed above, exercising self-control consumes psychological resources, and when these resources are depleted, it is more difficult for people to control subsequent behavior. A wide range of volitional activities require self-control, from overriding impulses and coping with stress to concentrating attention and maintaining vigilance (Baumeister et al., 1998; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), and such activities are common in most jobs. Thus, it is not surprising that self-control is a necessary ingredient for optimal performance and well-being at work (Johnson, Chang, & Lord, 2006; Kanfer, Frese, & Johnson, 2017; Lord, Diefendorff, Schmidt, & Hall, 2010). As such, organizational scholars have begun exploring the antecedents, consequences, and boundary conditions of employee self-control, which we summarize below.

Antecedents of Employee Depletion

Performance regulation (e.g., allocating attention and effort across tasks, blocking out distractions; Beal, Weiss, Barros, & MacDermid 2005; Lord et al., 2010) requires self-control, especially for work tasks requiring high levels of attention and effort. Although it is well-established that difficult and specific goals inspire the highest levels of attention and effort (Locke & Latham, 2002), they may also result in greater depletion. In fact, assigning difficult and specific goals on consecutive tasks results in greater depletion compared to assigning easy or “do your best” goals (Welsh & Ordóñez, 2014). Work tasks are also more depleting when irrelevant information must be suppressed. For example, rating job applicants with (vs. without) facial stigmas (e.g., a scar) is more depleting owing to the added self-control demands of suppressing the physical distractor (Madera & Hebl, 2012). The mindsets needed to complete tasks can also vary (e.g., assessment vs. locomotion), yet it is more demanding to switch between mindsets than to maintain a consistent mindset (Hamilton, Vohs, Sellier, & Meyvis, 2011), which has implications for jobs involving high levels of multitasking.

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Besides the self-control demands of required in-role work activities, organizational scholars have also explored those of discretionary work behaviors (e.g., helping, voice). Although providing help is beneficial for recipients, it may come at a cost for helpers. Responding to help requests is depleting because it interrupts current goal progress and it involves suppressing self-interest and mindset switching (Lanaj, Johnson, & Wang, 2016). Similarly, although expressing concerns and identifying problems regarding task outcomes and processes (i.e., prohibitive voice) is beneficial for companies, doing so is depleting for employees because it requires constant vigilance and contingency planning for all real and imagined problems (Lin & Johnson, 2015). Fortunately, self-control impairments are lessened when helping and voice behaviors generate workable solutions and have a noticeable prosocial impact on others (Lanaj et al., 2016; Lin & Johnson, 2015).

Organizational scholars have also identified job stressors that tax employee self-control (e.g., Gross, Semmer, Meier, Kälin, Jacobshagen, & Tschan, 2011; Rivkin, Diestel, & Schmidt, 2015). For example, being overloaded with work and facing tremendous time pressure depletes self-control resources and lessens employees’ ability to control impulses and resist distractions (Diestel & Schmidt, 2012; Prem, Kubicek, Diestel, & Korunka, 2016). Dealing with uncertainty about how to do one’s job or about what the future may bring also diminishes self-control because it requires active attention and vigilance. When faced with high uncertainty, decision-makers experience greater depletion and make less optimal decisions as a result (Milkman, 2012; see also Conlon, Tinsley, Birk, Humphrey, & Ellis, 2012). Exposure to physiological stressors (e.g., pain) can also increase employee depletion (Christian, Eisenkraft, & Kapadia, 2014).

Job stressors that involve interpersonal interactions can be especially depleting. For example, interacting with interracially diverse partners can be depleting, possibly because such interactions are more uncertain and require greater vigilance (Richeson & Trawalter, 2005). Experiencing abuse from supervisors, coworkers, and customers taxes self-control because employees must expend resources to understand the causes for abuse, keep negative emotions in check, and consider the ramifications of responding to the abuse (Lian, Brown, Ferris, Liang, Keeping, & Morrison, 2014; Lian, Ferris, Morrison, & Brown, 2014; Rafaeli, Erez, Ravid, Derfler-Rozin, Treister, & Scheyer, 2012; Thau & Mitchell, 2010). Mild forms of mistreatment for which intent to harm is vague (e.g., incivility, undermining) also consumes victims’ resources (Lee, Kim, Bhave, & Duffy, 2016; Rosen, Koopman, Gabriel, & Johnson, 2016). Despite being mild, such mistreatment diminishes self-control because employees may have to expend resources to make sense of whether it was intentional and why it occurred (Rosen et al., 2016). Interestingly, even company-sanctioned punishment (e.g., verbal reprimands) depletes resources because employees must cope with stress and self-doubt (Deng & Leung, 2014).

Self-control is also diminished by adherence to company rules and norms (DeBono, Shmueli, & Muraven, 2011), particularly when they are incongruent with personal values (Deng, Wu, Leung, & Guan, 2015). Many companies have emotional display rules, which create dissonance when felt emotions deviate from required emotions. To relieve this dissonance, employees exercise self-control to display the required emotion (Diestel, Rivkin, & Schmidt, 2015; Grandey, Fisk, & Steiner, 2005; Prem et al., 2016). It is especially depleting when employees surface act as they must continually suppress their felt emotions and fake the required emotions (Beal, Trougakos, Weiss, & Dalal, 2013; Trougakos, Beal, Cheng, Hideg, & Zweig, 2015; Wagner, Barnes, & Scott, 2014; Yam, Fehr, Keng-Highberger, Klotz, & Reynolds, 2015). Many companies also have rules and norms regarding fair and ethical conduct. However, regulating behavior to be fair and ethical is depleting because employees must suppress self-serving motives and temptations to do “what’s profitable” as opposed to “what’s right” (Gino, Schweitzer, Mead, & Ariely, 2011; Johnson, Lanaj, & Barnes, 2014; Liao, Lee, Johnson, & Lin, 2017; Lin, Ma, & Johnson, 2016; Pitesa, Thau, & Pillutla, 2013).

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A final stream of research examines activities outside of the office that spill over to impact self-control at work. Sleep is a key restorative activity, and several studies verify that insufficient sleep quantity and quality leave employees depleted at the start of the workday (Barnes, Lucianetti, Bhave, & Christian, 2015; Barnes et al., 2011; Christian & Ellis, 2011; Lanaj, Johnson, & Barnes, 2014; Welsh, Ellis, Christian, & Mai, 2014). A stressful commute to work can also leave employees feeling depleted and starting off the workday on the wrong foot (Ma, Lin, Johnson, & Chang, 2016; Zhou, Wang, Chang, Liu, Zhan, & Shi, 2017). Coping with conflict in the family domain can similarly leave employees depleted at work (Courtright, Gardner, Smith, McCormick, & Colbert, in press; Dahm, Glomb, Manchester, & Leroy, 2015; Liu, Wang, Chang, Shi, Zhou, & Shao, 2015). However, being away from the office affords employees the opportunities to psychologically detach from work and replenish their self-control resources (Dai, Milkman, Hofmann, & Staats, 2015; Sonnentag & Bayer, 2005; Sonnentag, Binnewies, & Mojza, 2010). For example, Lanaj, Johnson, and Barnes (2014) found that employees had greater self-control on days when they limited their use of smartphones and other electronic devices for work purposes the previous night. Employees can also replenish self-control while at work. For example, Trougakos, Hideg, Cheng, and Beal (2014) found that engaging in relaxing activities during lunch breaks improved self-control whereas engaging in work activities during lunch diminished self-control.

Work-Based Consequences of Depletion

Most renderings of the criterion space of job performance include three dimensions (i.e., task, citizenship, and counterproductive behaviors; Rotundo & Sackett, 2002), and self-control has implications for all three. Task behaviors refer to the performance of required, in-role duties and responsibilities associated with a given job. Sufficient self-control resources are needed to attend to and invest effort in focal work goals, block out distractions, and persist in the face of difficulties (Beal et al., 2005). Supporting this idea, several empirical studies find that diminished self-control has detrimental effects on task performance (e.g., Chi, Chang, & Huang, 2015; Deng & Leung, 2014; Deng et al., 2015; Lin & Johnson, 2015). When employees are depleted, they experience information processing deficits (Rafaeli et al., 2012), show reduced job engagement (Lanaj et al., 2014), allocate less time to required task activities (Dahm et al., 2015), and comply less with professional standards (Dai et al., 2015).

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Citizenship behaviors refer to discretionary activities that are not necessarily task-related yet they contribute to the social and psychological climate at work. Examples of these behaviors include helping coworkers, offering suggestions to improve work outputs and processes, and promoting the company to outsiders. Exhibiting citizenship and prosocial behaviors requires sufficient self-control resources because they are performed in addition to required, in-role tasks and they typically require individuals to set aside their own self-interests (Osgood & Muraven, 2015). Consistent with this logic, employees with diminished self-control engage in less helping (Johnson et al., 2014; Lin & Johnson, 2015; Trougakos et al., 2015), report fewer intentions to cooperate with coworkers (Christian et al., 2014), and volunteer fewer suggestions for improvements and preventing errors (Lin & Johnson, 2015).

Counterproductive behaviors refer to destructive acts that harm the company (e.g., stealing or damaging company property) or its members (e.g., bullying or ostracizing coworkers). A well-established finding in the self-control literature is that people are unable to control deviant and aggressive impulses when their self-control is diminished (e.g., DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007; Muraven, Pogarsky, & Shmueli, 2006), which extends to organizational contexts as well. Depleted individuals are more likely to cheat or misrepresent their performance on work tasks (Barnes et al., 2011; Christian & Ellis, 2011; Gino et al., 2011; Welsh & Ordóñez, 2014; Yam, Chen, & Reynolds, 2014), deceive (Welsh et al., 2014) and undermine (Lee et al., 2016) others, and be verbally aggressive toward peers (Christian & Ellis, 2011; Rosen et al., 2016), supervisors (Lian, Brown, et al., 2014; Thau & Mitchell, 2010), customers (Chi et al., 2015), and family members (Liu et al., 2015). Organizational scholars have examined supervisors specifically, finding that diminished self-control is a primary reason why supervisors abuse their subordinates (Barnes et al., 2015; Lin et al., 2016; Yam et al., 2015). In addition to active forms of counterproductive behavior, diminished self-control also predicts passive or withdrawn forms, such as withholding effort (Christian et al., 2014), avoiding customers (Trougakos, Jackson, & Beal, 2011) and subordinates (Liao et al., 2017), and cyberloafing (Wagner, Barnes, Lim, & Ferris, 2012).

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Boundary Conditions of the Work-Based Effects of Depletion

Although diminished self-control tends to reduce task and citizenship behaviors and increase counterproductive behavior, certain personal and situational factors constrain these effects. In terms of personal factors, employees vary in how much self-control and cognitive resources they have at their disposal, thus it has been found that variables like self-control capacity (Diestel et al., 2015; Lian, Brown, et al., 2014; Lian, Ferris, et al., 2014; Yam et al., 2015) and cognitive ability (Rafaeli et al., 2012) buffer depletion-based effects. Depletion-based effects are also counteracted when employees are highly motivated, such as those high in conscientiousness (Chi et al., 2015; Wagner et al., 2012), motivation for self-control (Lian, Brown, et al., 2014; Lian, Ferris, et al., 2014), or commitment to their company (Rivkin et al., 2015). Employees who are more resilient to stress, such as those high in extraversion (Chi, Grandey, Diamond, & Krimmel, 2011; Johnson et al., 2014), emotional stability (Johnson et al., 2014), or core self-evaluation (Deng & Leung, 2014), are also less susceptible to depletion-based effects. The likelihood that depletion triggers counterproductive behaviors in particular is lessened for employees who care deeply about morality (Gino et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2016), the welfare of others (Pitesa et al., 2013), or the self-referenced meaning of their behavior (Rosen et al., 2016).

Situational factors have received less attention than personal ones, but two key boundary conditions that buffer depletion-based effects are the extent to which the work environment affords autonomy (Grandey et al., 2005; Lanaj et al., 2014; Prem et al., 2016; Trougakos et al., 2014) and social support (Liu et al., 2015). On the flip-side, organizational contexts that are rife with interpersonal stressors (Gross et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2015) and politicking (Rosen et al., 2016) exacerbate depletion-based effects. Social norms and values also impact whether or not diminished self-control translates into counterproductive behavior (Welsh et al., 2014). For example, when social consensus agrees that a behavior is deemed unethical, employees who are depleted will refrain from exhibiting that behavior (Yam et al., 2014).

Challenges and Issues Concerning Self-Control Research

Although research on self-control has uncovered numerous antecedents, consequences, and boundary conditions of depletion effects, it has also uncovered pressing questions that have yet to be answered. Some of these questions concern the process and resource that underlie depletion effects, whereas others concern how depletion is measured and modeled. We review three key issues in the remainder of this section.

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Underlying Process

Despite the strong evidence for this depletion effect in the workplace and other environments, the process underlying the decline in self-control remains a matter of debate. That is, it is not clear what causes self-control performance to decline after exerting self-control. To date, two main approaches have been proposed: biological (glucose) and psychological (expectancies). The glucose model builds on research that has shown that performance on difficult mental tasks is related to extracellular levels of glucose in the brain (Fairclough & Houston, 2004; Gage, Kelly, & Bjorklund, 1984). Moreover, brain glucose levels fluctuate based on mental effort, becoming depleted as effort is exerted (McNay, McCarty, & Gold, 2001). According to this model, the resource being depleted in the exertion of self-control is real and may be glucose. Consistent with that idea, research pioneered by Gailliot and others (Gailliot et al., 2007; Wang & Dvorak, 2010) found that blood glucose declined after people engaged in a self-control task. In addition, the ingestion of sugar-containing drinks helped to negate the effects of depletion (Denson, von Hippel, Kemp, & Teo, 2010; Gailliot, Peruche, Plant, & Baumeister, 2009). In other words, glucose may be the fuel driving self-control and it can be depleted through mental effort.

Researchers have criticized these findings, suggesting that they are not biologically possible (e.g., Orquin & Kurzban, 2016). However, it is important to realize that research on glucose metabolism has made it evident that brain glucose levels are only weakly correlated with blood glucose levels. Moreover, the brain keeps a separate store of extracellular glucose that can be depleted (Fellows, Boutelle, & Fillenz, 1992). Thus, small changes in mental effort may indeed deplete these local stores of glucose, resulting in poorer performance (McNay, Fries, & Gold, 2000). Thus, there may be a biological basis for the depletion effect.

On the other hand, researchers have also shown that self-control efforts fail after exerting self-control because this is what people believe should happen. This expectancy approach suggests that people may hold lay theories of self-control that it is limited and therefore after exercising self-control, they exert less self-control. Consistent with that idea, people who believed self-control is not limited did not exhibit the depletion effect (Burnette, O’Boyle, VanEpps, Pollack, & Finkel, 2013; Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010). For example, on days when managers experienced a stressful commute to work, those who believed that self-control is limited exhibited fewer effective leader behaviors throughout the workday (Ma et al., 2016). In contrast, a stressful commute did not predict reductions in leader behavior for managers who believed that self-control is non-limited. Likewise, the perception of depletion or having exerted self-control has been shown to predict self-control performance, regardless of actual effort (Clarkson, Hirt, Jia, & Alexander, 2010). Broadly, this research implies that self-control fails because people expect it to.

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A more reliable account of self-control failure may lie in the integration of these ideas. As noted earlier, dogs have exhibited the depletion effect (Miller, Pattison, DeWall, Rayburn-Reeves, & Zentall, 2010), despite lacking (as far as we know) clear psychological models of self-control. However, self-control likely does not fail because people have depleted all of the extracellular glucose stored in their brain (a state that may result in permanent brain damage or death; Moley & Mueckler, 2000). Instead, people may be motivated to use as little self-control as possible, in order to retain glucose reserves for future self-control demands (Evans, Boggero, & Segerstrom, 2016). This may explain why manipulations that increase motivation or communicate greater resource availability may lead to improved self-control performance (Job et al., 2010; Molden et al., 2012; Muraven & Slessareva, 2003). As such, merely swishing sugary drinks without swallowing them may increase self-control because the body senses the sugar and comes to expect more resources (Molden et al., 2012). Exertions of self-control may increase the motivation to conserve resources (Muraven, Shmueli, & Burkley, 2006), which could account for the depletion effect. Consistent with this idea, Vohs, Baumeister, and Schmeichel (2012) found that self-control performance was related to expectancies and motivation at moderate levels of depletion but at more extreme levels of depletion the effects of psychological beliefs on self-control were minimal. In short, the idea that people are motivated to conserve the limited and depletable glucose reserves in the brain but external forces can motivate people to overcome this reluctance may be the best fit to the data.

Measurement Issues

Given the lack of consensus regarding the exact resource that is being depleted by acts of self-control, it is perhaps not surprising that self-control resources and depletion have been operationalized in a variety of different ways by organizational scholars. One of the most common measures is based on an unpublished state self-control capacity scale developed by Twenge, Muraven, and Tice (2004). Several researchers (e.g., Barnes et al., 2015; Christian & Ellis, 2011; Deng & Leung, 2014; Lanaj et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2016; Lin et al., 2016; Thau & Mitchell, 2010; Welsh & Ordóñez, 2014; Yam et al., 2014) have assessed depletion using some or all of the 25 items on this scale. Example items include “Right now, it would take a lot of effort for me to concentrate on something,” “I feel drained,” “I feel mentally exhausted,” and “I feel like my willpower is gone.” Johnson, Lanaj, and Barnes (2014) provide evidence in support of the validity of this scale by showing that responses on the items are lower after performing cognitively demanding activities requiring self-control.

Self-control resources and depletion have also been operationalized using survey-based measures of cognitive focus (e.g., Madera & Hebl, 2012), cognitive fatigue (e.g., Barnes et al., 2011; Gross et al., 2011), task difficulty (e.g., Gino et al., 2011), emotional exhaustion (e.g., Grandey et al., 2005; Liu et al., 2015), emotional fatigue (e.g., Trougakos et al., 2014), and emotional strain (e.g., Hülsheger, Lang, & Maier, 2010), among others. A critical issue with some of these measures is that they measure phenomena believed to be unique from self-control. For example, emotions, mood, and arousal do not account for the observed effects of diminished self-control (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1998; Muraven & Slessareva, 2003). Thus, measures that assess or are confounded with these emotional phenomena are not suitable proxies for depletion.

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Because of the severe limits on the reliability of self-reports of depletion, self-control resources and depletion are more commonly inferred from performance on tasks that require attention and control. For example, the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935) has been used in multiple studies as a proxy for depletion (e.g., Conlon et al., 2012; Madera & Hebl, 2012; Pitesa et al., 2013; Rosen et al., 2016). This task involves presenting individuals with color words printed in a different color (e.g., the word “red” printed in green letters), and instructing them to report the color of the letters and not the word that is written. Responding to written words is relatively automatic, thus the task requires self-control to suppress the meaning of the word. Other performance-based measures of depletion include persistence on frustrating or impossible tasks (e.g., Converse & DeShon, 2009; Hamilton et al., 2011), persistence on visual search tasks (e.g., Barnes et al., 2011), and suppressing facial displays of emotion (e.g., Hamilton et al., 2011). Using performance measures has advantages because people may not always be aware of their current self-control capacity and it lessens the likelihood of common method variance in survey-based research.

Finally, several studies propose diminished self-control as the mechanism responsible for hypothesized effects, yet it is not directly measured (e.g., Chi et al., 2015; Dahm et al., 2015; Dholakia, Gopinath, & Bagozzi, 2005; Diestel et al., 2015; Diestel & Schmidt, 2012; Rothbard, 2001; Lian et al., 2014; Trougakos et al., 2011). Neglecting to measure self-control resources or depletion is not ideal, though, because alternative explanations have been put forward that predict a similar pattern of effects as ego depletion theory. Direct measures are therefore needed to verify that self-control is the mechanism in question for observed effects. We discuss alternative explanations next.

Alternative Explanations for Observed Effects of Diminished Self-Control

Reductions in effort and performance following activities with high self-control and resource demands may be attributable to ego depletion, yet there are other explanations for such effects. A simple explanation is that exerting self-control may elicit negative emotions in people, and these negative moods and states carry over to reduce motivation on subsequent tasks. Although emotions do impact behavior, depletion effects are observed after accounting for mood and other affective states (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1998; Rosen et al., 2016; Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). Moreover, although demanding, many activities that require self-control are enjoyable to perform (e.g., a creative task or logic problem requiring vigilance), in which case the experience of mental depletion does not coincide with negative affect and may in fact be accompanied by positive affect. In short, the effects of depletion appear unique from affect.

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It has also been suggested that self-control performance suffers because exerting self-control disrupts the attentional system (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007). This suggests that the initial exertion of self-control weakens the neural system responsible for monitoring and activating self-control. After exerting self-control, people are less likely to realize that self-control is necessary. Thus, the dual-task design that is typically used in experimental studies of depletion may be particularly sensitive to attentional blindness. Yet research on vigilance (as reviewed in Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) finds that performance on the same task also suffers over time, so this account cannot fully explain the observed effect.

There has been some intriguing research linking self-control exertion to changes in heart rate variability (Segerstrom & Nes, 2007). People who exerted self-control had more variability in their heart rate than those who did not exert self-control and this variability in heart rate was correlated with subsequent self-control performance. This suggests that there may be an overlap between brain systems involved in self-control and those involved in regulating the autonomic nervous system. Other physiological measures of stress and negative affect, such as skin conductance and overall heart rate, differed from the index of heart rate variance, which again suggests that depletion effects are not just a product of negative affect or stress.

Besides less conscious explanations like affect and heart rate variability, depletion effects might also owe to more cognitive and deliberative motivational processes. For example, one possibility is that declines in self-control performance represent a weakening of inhibition, an increase in desire, or both. For instance, Schmeichel et al. (2010) found that after exerting self-control, people paid more attention to cues that signaled reward as opposed to neutral cues. In other words, exercising self-control may prompt employees to believe they deserve recognition and compensation, thereby shifting their attention from self-constraint to cues for rewards (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012). Such an effect is consistent with the finding that self-control reductions are especially likely when subsequent tasks lack incentives (Muraven & Slessareva, 2003).

Another motivational process that parallels a depletion effect is moral self-licensing (Miller & Effron, 2010; Mukhopadhyay & Johar, 2009), which refers to people engaging in unethical acts following displays of morally laudable behavior. This effect occurs because initial moral acts accrue moral credits and credentials for people, which can lead them to feel ‘licensed’ to engage in questionable acts without threatening their self-concept as a moral person. Interestingly, exhibiting ethical behavior involves suppressing self-interest, abiding by social norms, and vigilantly monitoring for moral ‘slip-ups,’ all of which are depleting activities that increase people’s susceptibility to commit subsequent unethical acts (Gino et al., 2011; Johnson et al., 2014; Pitesa et al., 2013). It is therefore unclear whether unethical acts preceded by demanding moral acts are the result of depletion or licensing.

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Given these plausible alternative explanations for depletion effects, it is crucial that researchers measure and control for competing mechanisms when examining self-control. Fortunately, this practice is already happening. Depletion effects have persisted even after accounting for, for example, affect (Baumeister et al., 1998), emotional exhaustion (Rosen et al., 2016), motivation to exert self-control and attention to reward cues (Lin & Johnson, 2015), and moral credits and credentials (Lin et al., 2016). Moreover, recent research suggests that motivation and behavior are not always aligned when depletion effects are observed. For example, people’s intentions to help others do not change when depleted, yet their actual behavior becomes more selfish (Osgood & Muraven, 2015). Nevertheless, researchers must continue to identify and model other potential mechanisms that may be confounded with depletion effects.

Future Directions for Research on Self-Control

Clearly, although we have a pretty firm grasp on the basics of self-control, there remain many important questions, both theoretical and applied to be answered. As should be clear from the discussion of the underlying process of self-control depletion, this is an area of active research. There are many competing ideas. Researchers may do well to learn more about how glucose powers the brain, as there seem to be some misunderstandings and oversimplifications in the literature, as well as gaps in the literature itself. Likewise, a more thorough model of how psychological beliefs moderate the effects of self-control is necessary. As it stands now, there are many findings, like self-licensing (Lin et al., 2016; Mukhopadhyay, Sengupta, & Ramanathan, 2008), the implicit theory model (Job et al., 2010), and the conservation approach (Muraven et al., 2006) that need to be integrated. Research on how people think about and process information about mental energy may be helpful in that regard (Buczny, Layton, & Muraven, 2015). Similarly, how people’s feelings and perspectives change during the process of self-control may be useful in crafting the next-generation models of depletion (Vohs & Schmeichel, 2003). There is a need for much more work on how perception and mindset of self-control activities affects levels of depletion.

Overall, the best approach to understanding why depletion happens is probably a conservation model that integrates energy conservation and glucose (Evans et al., 2016; Muraven et al., 2006) with psychological resource allocation (Beedie & Lane, 2012). To that end, a better idea of what depletes people is critical. In addition, a clearer picture of extreme levels and chronic levels of depletion is needed. This is an area where research on organizations may be useful, in that they can examine situations like the workplace that are both very important and very stressful to people. Organizational researchers also have access to a suitable context for examining cyclical changes in situations (e.g., from work to home and from weekday to weekend) that may yield useful data on long-term patterns of depletion and self-control. In fact, such data are already being collected, as field studies within organizations have shown that the effects of depletion occur within the same workday (e.g., Rosen et al., 2016), across consecutive workdays (e.g., Lin et al., 2016), and even across consecutive workweeks (e.g., Lin & Johnson, 2015). Finally, the structure of workplaces may provide opportunities to test aspects of the depletion model in a rich and engaging environment (e.g., self-control in achievement and interpersonal domains, how ego depletion occurs and spreads in teams, and spillover between work and home).

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Besides the underlying process of depletion, the depletion effect itself also suffers from a lack of information. For example, we do not know how long the effects may last. Some evidence suggests that the decline in self-control performance may be proportional to the amount of self-control exerted (Muraven, Collins, & Nienhaus, 2002) but other evidence suggests a more non-linear effect (Vohs et al., 2012). Initial research on self-control was conducted primarily using experimental methods in the laboratory, where depletion was assessed seconds or minutes after initial acts of self-control (e.g., Muraven et al., 1998). Since then, depletion effects over longer periods of time have been examined in field studies. For example, depletion effects appear to persist after several hours within the same day (e.g., DeHart, Longua Peterson, Richeson, & Hamilton, 2014; Rosen et al., 2016), across consecutive days (e.g., Lanaj et al., 2014; Lin et al., 2016), across consecutive weeks (e.g., Lin & Johnson, 2015), and even across multiple months (e.g., Martínez-Íñigo, Poerio, & Totterdell, 2013). It is quite remarkable that depletion effects are observed over such long (e.g., weekly and monthly) time cycles, given that other phenomena are likely to be experienced which influence people’s self-control and available resources in the interim (e.g., stressors at work or home, respite opportunities, etc.). Building on this early evidence, future research is needed that speaks directly to the timing and duration of depletion effects as well as how repeated encounters with a demanding situation affect self-control.

Given the applied nature of the industrial and organizational psychology and management disciplines, there are important practical issues that require further attention. For example, a complete picture of the work-based consequences of depletion is yet to be fleshed out. Currently, it is well established that depleted employees are more likely to engage in deviant acts that harm companies, such as stealing and cheating, and erode interpersonal relations, such as verbally abusing and undermining others (e.g., Barnes et al., 2015; Gino et al., 2011; Welsh & Ordóñez, 2014). Evidence is also growing that depleted employees are more likely to scale back productive work behaviors that improve the quantity, quality, and efficiency of work outputs (e.g., Deng & Leung, 2014; Lanaj et al., 2014; Lin & Johnson, 2015) and prosocial behaviors that cultivate pleasant and cooperative work relationships (e.g., Christian et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2014; Trougakos et al., 2015). There are, however, other work criteria that contribute to company success, such as creativity and innovation, safety behavior, and adaptive behavior, among others. While it might be expected that depletion is detrimental for these other criteria, these expectations require more empirical attention.

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Another practical issue concerns what companies and managers can do to improve the self-control of employees and/or mitigate the effects of depletion. Some research has explored ways to counteract depletion and/or replenish self-control resources, which might be accomplished by providing opportunities for respite during the workday (Trougakos et al., 2008), boosting job autonomy (Sonnentag & Zijlstra, 2006), or facilitating positive social events (Bono, Glomb, Shen, Kim, & Koch, 2013). Employees can also take steps to replenish their self-control resources outside of the office by, for example, powering off work-related smartphones and computers (Lanaj et al., 2012), pursuing non-job mastery experiences (e.g., participating in hobbies and sports; Sonnentag et al., 2008), or getting sufficient sleep (Welsh et al., 2014). Unfortunately, we still do not know much about how to best design self-control interventions to leverage these findings. Clearly, there is much theory building to be done in this area so we can design maximally effective interventions. Some open questions include what makes one intervention better than another, how long the intervention or training should last, how frequently should employees train, and, most broadly, why does the intervention work at all? We see intervention research as one of the most important and needed areas in the self-control literature that organizational scholars can contribute to.

Conclusion

Many contemporary theories view work motivation and performance as a process through which employees’ available attention and cognitive resources are allocated across a range of goals and activities in response to task demands, personal values and attitudes, interpersonal dynamics, and incentives, among other impetuses (e.g., Beal et al., 2005; Lord et al., 2010; see Kanfer et al., 2017, for a review). Self-control is the key for effectively regulating behavior under these circumstances because people have a finite pool of resources to fuel on-task behaviors and block out off-task distractions. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for employees to become depleted owing to sustained acts of self-control. As we reviewed in this chapter, the effects of depletion can be quite detrimental for employees as well as their coworkers and companies. We are encouraged, however, by new avenues of research that identify ways to strengthen self-control and/or replenish available resources, which has broad implications for other aspects of employees’ self-concepts, such as their self-esteem and self-efficacy.

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