Cultural Differences in the Effects of Ego-Depletion
Katharine Brown and Jay Brown
Department of Psychology, Texas Wesleyan University
Method
Self-Control & Social Cooperation
•Self-control and social-cooperation can be thought of using the
same terminology if we think of ourselves existing across time.
•Self-control involves a sacrifice by our present-selves so that our
future-selves will have better outcomes.
•Social-cooperation also involves a sacrifice by our present-selves so
that our group will have better outcomes.
•Previous correlational research revealed that participant’s
reported levels of self-controlled behaviors were strongly related to
their socially-cooperative behaviors.
Ego-Strength Influences Self-Control and
Social- Cooperation
• It has been proposed that both self-control and socialcooperation are controlled by the same cognitive resource
(sometimes called ego-strength or willpower).
• Previous research (Brown & Brown, 2015) manipulated
ego-strength using vignettes in which participants
imagined fatigue or stress.
•Participants that imagined themselves to be under Stress or
Fatigue reported significantly lower levels of both self-control
and social-cooperation.
•This supports the notion of a single resource controlling both
types of behavior.
• However, little work has been done showing how egostrength works cross-culturally.
Results and Discussion
•Participants from Texas and China read one of 4 vignettes
in which they were asked to imagine they are feeling
stressed and fatigued, they are feeling stressed, they are
feeling fatigued, or they are feeling neither.
Vignette for Stress, No Fatigue
•Imagine yourself in the following scenario. You’ve been under a great deal
of stress lately between tests to study for, medical problems, and family
issues. You can’t stop thinking about your situation because there is so
much that could happen and so many things you should do—but you just
can’t be sure what to do first, much less how you will take care of
everything. It’s all been piling up over the last year, and now it’s like a
heavy burden on your shoulders. At least you’ve been getting very good
sleep. You’ve been falling asleep easily and sleeping through the night,
waking feeling refreshed each morning. But that stress! If you could just get
some of the stress behind you, everything would take care of itself.
• Texas participants reported that they would be
significantly more likely to exhibit social-cooperation
(𝑋 = 6.33) than self-control (𝑋 = 5.85).
•t(132) = 3.45, p < .01
• Chinese participants also reported that they would
be significantly more likely to exhibit socialcooperation (𝑋 = 6.53) than self-control (𝑋 = 5.67).
•t(38) = 5.75, p < .001
• Texas and Chinese participants did not differ as a
whole on either self-control or social-cooperation.
•For self-control, t(168) = 1.23, p > .05
•For social-cooperation, t(168) = -0.58, p > .05
Social-Cooperation
Method
•Following the vignette, participants responded to 69
questions (36 self-control, 33 social-cooperation)
•Scored on a scale of 0 (Not at all likely) to 10 (It is
Very Likely)
•Self-control items divided into internal and external.
•Social-cooperation items divided into helping and
empathy
•“Keeping in mind the story you previously read, put
yourself in that state of mind. How likely would you
do the following…..”
Internal Self-Control
•…be on time for appointments (external self-control)
•…control your thoughts (internal self-control)
•…volunteer in your community (social-cooperation:
helping)
•…feel other’s pain (social-cooperation: empathy)
Conclusion
• Stress and fatigue make Americans less likely to be socially-cooperative.
• Perhaps the Chinese participants, coming from a collectivistic society, view social-cooperation almost as habitual.
•Habits are essentially reflexive and do not require cognitive resources. Therefore, depleting this cognitive resource does not affect them.
• Stress and fatigue makes Chinese less likely to exhibit internal self-control.
•Perhaps internal self-control is viewed as more situational by the Chinese participants, more subject to change with the situation.
•This fits in well with Markus and Kitayama’s model of the self. In this model, people with more interdependent (collectivistic) selves need to change themselves to