A Multilab Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect

Jacek Buczny , Junhua Dang , Paul Barker , Anna Baumert , Margriet Bentvelzen , Elliot Berkman , Nita Buchholz , Valeria De Cristofaro , Lianne de Vries , Siegfried Dewitte , Mauro Giacomantonio , Ran Gong , Maaike Homan , Roland Imhoff , Ismaharif Ismail , Lile Jia , Thomas Kubiak , Florian Lange , Dan-Yang Li , Jordan Livingston , Rita Ludwig , Angelo Panno , Joshua Pearman , Niklas Rassi , Helgi B. Schioth , Manfred Schmitt , A. Timur Sevincer , Jiaxin Shi , Angelos Stamos , Yia Chin Tan , Mario Wenzel , Oulmann Zerhouni , Li-Wei Zhang , Yi-Jia Zhang , Axel Zinkernagel , Zhansheng Chen

Abstract

There is an active debate regarding whether the ego depletion effect is real. A recent preregistered experiment with the Stroop task as the depleting task and the antisaccade task as the outcome task found a medium-level effect size. In the current research, we conducted a preregistered multilab replication of that experiment. Data from 12 labs across the globe (N ¼ 1,775) revealed a small and significant ego depletion effect, d ¼ 0.10. After excluding participants who might have responded randomly during the outcome task, the effect size increased to d ¼ 0.16. By adding an informative, unbiased data point to the literature, our findings contribute to clarifying the existence, size, and generality of ego depletion.