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Lee 2017
Lee 2017
Lee 2017
doi: 10.1111/apps.12109
Mark Keil
Georgia State University, USA
INTRODUCTION
Does a tired (vs. a rested) mind improve or decrease your decision quality? The
answer seems obvious; as managers often make stupid errors when their mind
is tired, this suggests that a tired mind decreases managerial decision quality.
Consistent with this intuition, Herbert Simons (1957) bounded rationality
notion and Daniel Kahnemans (1973) single resource model of attention
stress that people commit more errors as fewer mental resources are available.
Not surprisingly, this intuition and the core theoretical assumptions of these
* Address for correspondence: Jong Seok Lee, Department of Business Information and
Technology, Fogelman College of Business & Economics, University of Memphis, Memphis,
TN 38152-3120, USA. Email: jslee4@memphis.edu
two Nobel Prize winners have received ample empirical support. In particular,
the stream of work on ego depletion led by Roy Baumeister and colleagues
have repeatedly demonstrated that mental fatigue causes failure in self-control
and that this in turns triggers negative behavioural consequences (Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). The notion of ego depletion has also gen-
erated interest among management reseachers in recent years (Converse &
DeShon, 2009; Gino, Schweitzer, Mead, & Ariely, 2011) and some reported
specific undesirable behaviours that can result from ego depletion, such as
unethical behaviour (Gino et al., 2011).
Contrary to the general view held by economists, psychologists, and man-
agement scholars that a tired mind decreases decision quality, we argue and
demonstrate that in at least one problem context a tired mind—operationalised
as a state of ego depletion—can actually help improve decision quality by
reducing escalation of commitment. Furthermore, this research contributes to
the escalation literature by offering fresh insight into how ones ability influen-
ces escalation decisions. A state of ego depletion impairs the ability to control
oneself on subsequent tasks (i.e. fewer mental resources). Although a strong
ability (i.e. more mental resources) may appear beneficial in avoiding escalation
of commitment, our research, which consists of two laboratory experiments,
provides valuable scientific evidence that in fact an impaired ability (i.e. fewer
mental resources) can effectively reduce esclation of commitment.
HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Motivation to justify ones own previous decisions (self-justification motive)
has been found to be a key element driving escalation of commitment (Brock-
ner, 1992; Staw, 1976, 1981). When people receive negative feedback
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STUDY 1
Method
Experimental Design and Participants. Our first experiment involved a
basic randomised design comparing two conditions in which we tested the
causal effect of ego depletion on escalation of commitment. In order to deter-
mine the sample size of Study 1, we consulted the results of a meta-analysis of
ego depletion studies conducted by Hagger, Wood, Stiff, and Chatzisarantis
(2010). Hagger et al. (2010, p. 508) reported that “the averaged corrected stand-
ardized mean difference for ego depletion on self-control dependent measures
was d 5 .62”. Drawing on this finding, we conducted a power analysis using
G*Power 3 (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) with the following
parameters: two independent groups t-test (two tailed), effect size (d 5 .62), sig-
nificance level (p 5 .05), and power (.8). The result of this power analysis indi-
cated the necessary total sample size of 84 (42 per group). Based on this, we
recruited 84 participants using Amazons Mechanical Turk, which has been
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EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 5
shown to be a high-quality source of data for psychology and social science
research (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). One participant did not fol-
low the instructions to complete the ego depletion task, thus we dropped the
response from this participant and used the responses from 83 participants (44
men and 39 women; mean age 5 35.76 years, SD 5 9.56, age range 5 22–67) in
the analyses reported in this paper.
variables, we measured participants mood and arousal using the Brief Mood
Introspection Scale (BMIS) (Mayer & Gaschke, 1988) and participants per-
ception about the likelihood of success “I think that the quality of this product
will be improved enough to be competitive in the market” and “I think this
product will eventually be successful in the market,” adapted from Moon
(2001). We also captured participants demographic information (age and gen-
der), because prior research found that older adults are less subject than
younger adults to escalation of commitment (Strough, Mehta, McFall, &
Schuller, 2008).
Results
We conducted an independent t-test and the results indicated that participants
in the ego depletion condition (i.e. the no-es condition) showed a greater will-
ingness to abandon the project (M 5 4.12, SD 5 1.66, N 5 41) than did partici-
pants in the non-ego depletion condition (i.e. the type-all-letter condition)
(M 5 3.14, SD 5 1.54, N 5 42), t(81) 5 2.79, p 5 .007, d 5 .61. We then exam-
ined the efficacy of our manipulation through a series of independent t-tests.
We found that the manipulation of ego depletion had a significant effect (in the
expected direction) on each of the three manipulation checks: self-control
effort (t(81) 5 5.31, p < .001, d 5 1.17), level of effort required to complete the
task (t(81) 5 3.78, p < .001, d 5 .83), and cognitive depletion (t(81) 5 2.42,
p 5 .018, d 5 .54). Further, the results of another independent t-test indicated
that ego depletion did not have a significant effect on pleasant-unpleasant
mood (BMIS) (p 5 .808) suggesting that the differences we observed cannot be
attributed to differences in mood that could have been triggered by the ego
depletion task. Finally, the results of an ANCOVA indicated that the effect of
ego depletion on the willingness to abandon the project (F(1,78) 5 5.29,
p 5 .024, g2p 5 .06) was significant in the presence of the covariates of
pleasant-unpleasant mood (BMIS), perception of success, and age. Overall,
these results provided initial evidence that individuals in a state of ego deple-
tion are less susceptible to escalation of commitment, thus supporting our
hypothesis.
STUDY 2
Method
Experimental Design and Participants. Our second experiment was
designed to confirm the effect of ego depletion on escalation of commitment
observed in Study 1, and to add robustness to the findings of our research. In
Study 2, which also involved a basic randomised design comparing two condi-
tions, we used a different manipulation of ego depletion and a different subject
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EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 7
pool. We introduced these changes in Study 2 in order to demonstrate the gen-
eralisability of the ego depletion effect found in Study 1. Study 2 was con-
ducted with undergraduate students enrolled in multiple sections of an
information systems course at a large urban university in the south-eastern
US. Similar to Experiment 1, we planned to recruit approximately 84 partici-
pants in Experiment 2. Although a total of 88 students took part in Experi-
ment 2, 14 responses were found to be incomplete, and thus we retained 74
complete responses for our analyses (51 men and 23 women; mean age 5 23.96
years, SD 5 5.06, age range 5 20–49).
Results
We conducted an independent t-test and the results indicated that participants
in the ego depletion condition showed less willingness to continue the project
(M 5 4.07, SD 5 1.71, N 5 41) than did participants in the non-ego depletion
condition (M 5 4.91, SD 5 1.70, N 5 33), t(72) 5 2.10, p 5 .040, d 5 .49. Fur-
ther, the results of another independent t-test indicated that participants in the
ego depletion condition showed a greater willingness to abandon the project
(M 5 3.56, SD 5 1.83, N 5 41) than did participants in the non-ego depletion
condition (M 5 2.45, SD 5 1.75, N 5 33), t(72) 5 2.63, p 5 .010, d 5 .62. Next,
we examined the efficacy of our manipulation through an independent t-test
and found that the manipulation of ego depletion had a significant effect (in
the expected direction) (t(72) 5 7.98, p < .001, d 5 1.90). Lastly, the results of a
MANCOVA indicated that ego depletion had significant effects on both the
willingness to continue the project (F(1,67) 5 5.55, p 5 .021, g2p 5 .08) and the
willingness to abandon the project (F(1,67) 5 6.82, p 5 .011, g2p 5 .09) after
controlling for positive mood, negative mood, and age. The results that were
obtained in Study 2 confirmed the findings of Study 1 and provided additional
evidence that ego depletion can effectively reduce escalation of commitment.
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EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 9
DISCUSSION
The results of the two experiments that were reported here indicate that ego
depletion attenuates escalation of commitment. Since the two experiments
employed different manipulations and different subject pools, we can be confi-
dent that the results are robust. We believe that our findings are important
because they are counterintuitive to a common belief that a tired mind
decreases decision quality. In addition, our conceptualisation of escalation of
commitment is consistent with one accepted in the escalation literature:
decision-makers (1) allocate some resources (e.g. money and/or time) into a
project in the hope of attaining some goals; (2) receive negative feedback indi-
cating that “at the very least, they have not yet attained their goals”; and (3)
choose to invest further resources into the project despite the uncertainty about
whether such additional investments may lead to a positive outcome
(Brockner, 1992). Empirically, in our two experiments we adapted the classic
escalation scenario that was developed by Arkes and Blumer (1985) and has
been used in a number of prior escalation studies (e.g. Moon, 2001; Garland,
1990; and Wong, Kwong, & Ng, 2008), and this gives additional confidence to
the findings of this research.
Theoretical Implications
Most influential decision making theories—for example, Herbert Simons
(1957) bounded rationality notion and Daniel Kahnemans (1973) single
resource model of attention—suggest that people are more prone to decision
errors and biases as their mental resources become scarce. However, our
research provides an interesting empirical evidence that appears to represent
an apparent contradiction to prevailing wisdom regarding the impact of ego
depletion on decision-making.
Prior research has posited that individuals in a state of ego depletion will
tend to accept the status quo (Danzigera et al., 2011). This is believed to be
because ego depleted individuals prefer to reduce the use of mental resources.
Given this background, one might expect that ego depletion would cause indi-
viduals to escalate their commitment to a failing course of action as this would
be a way of maintaining the status quo. But, our results provide an apparent
contradiction to established theory in that ego depletion appears to encourage
de-escalation and a movement away from the status quo, rather than escala-
tion. The apparent contradiction can be reconciled as follows: if maintaining
the status quo is easy and does not demand mental resources, individuals in an
ego depleted state may prefer the status quo, as suggested by prior research
(e.g. Kahneman, 2013; Danzigera et al., 2011). On the other hand, if maintain-
ing the status quo demands additional mental resources (such as having to
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Limitations
As with any research, our study is not without limitations. First, to probe the
connection between ego depletion and escalation of commitment, we con-
ducted two laboratory experiments. Kozlowski (2009) indicated that a new
research idea probably should first be tested in laboratory settings before it can
be applied in field settings; “laboratory investigations are better for demon-
strating that an effect can occur and for examining a phenomenon with preci-
sion. Field settings are better suited for showing that an effect does occur and
for building evidence that a lab phenomenon generalizes” (p. 1). Consistent
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Conclusion
In conclusion, in this research rather than focusing on the negative consequen-
ces of ego depletion, we highlight the fact that there may be some circumstan-
ces in which ego depletion can actually have a positive effect, leading to
improved decision quality. Specifically, our research shows that ego depletion
can attenuate escalation of commitment.
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