The Problem of Ego Depletion and its remedy
In one of my earlier posts (read it here), I discussed the concept of Ego Depletion.
The concept of Ego Depletion goes something like that self-control or will power is available to us in finite quantity. If we use our will power frequently, chances are that after some time it will get depleted and we’ll cave into temptations.
For example, if you are working on something that requires rigorous mental effort and if it is that kind of work for which you need motivation and will power, chances are that after some time, you’ll give up that to the distractions or temptation.
So that was the concept of Ego Depletion. Now, yesterday I was reading this fabulous book ‘Thinking fast and slow’ by Daniel Kahneman. In the book, he discusses one really interesting thing related to Ego depletion.
In the book, he says that doing mental work requires energy, in fact, a lot of energy. Our brain is the biggest consumer of the energy. Even when are resting, it constantly drains our energy.
He further says that both self-control and cognitive effort are forms of mental work. It means, Self-control requires attention and effort.
In the book, he further discusses some interesting experiments done by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues. In the experiments, they showed that all kinds of efforts – whether it is physical, emotional or mental requires mental energy.
Baumeister’s group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion.
They showed that after exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to.
I hope you are with me till now because the most interesting part and the reason behind this post will come now.
Baumeister group showed and argued that this idea of mental energy is more than a mere metaphor.
The nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and effortful mental activity appears to be especially expensive in the currency of glucose. It means, it uses a lot of energy and leave you tired. When you are actively involved in difficult cognitive reasoning or engaged in a task that requires self-control, your blood glucose level drops. The effect is analogous to a runner who draws down glucose stored in her muscles during a sprint.
The bold implication of this idea is that the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose, and Baumeister and his colleagues have confirmed this hypothesis in several experiments.
In one of their experiments, volunteers watched a short silent film of a woman being interviewed and were asked to interpret her body language.
While they were performing the task, a series of words crossed the screen in slow succession. The participants were specifically instructed to ignore the words, and if they found their attention drawn away, they had to refocus their concentration on the woman’s behavior.
This act of self-control was known to cause ego depletion.
All the volunteers drank some lemonade before participating in a second task. The lemonade was sweetened with glucose for half of them and with Splenda for the others. Then all participants were given a task in which they needed to overcome an intuitive response to get the correct answer.
Intuitive errors are normally much more frequent among ego-depleted people, and the drinkers of Splenda showed the expected depletion effect. In the other hand, the glucose drinkers were not depleted. Restoring the level of available sugar in the brain had prevented the deterioration of performance.
There you have it, you can save yourself from ego depletion by taking some calories. You see, energy is energy. We differentiate between physical and mental, but body doesn’t.
I always thought that the ego depletion is some kind of natural law which we have to abide by. But after reading about this technique to negate the effect of ego depletion, I now have some hope to save myself from caving into temptation of binging Netflix after putting 1000 words on paper.
So, next time you feel tired after doing some strenuous mental activity, take some calories and move on.
So that’s it from me today, I’ll be back soon with another post.
Be Safe.