Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ego Depletion And The Internet: Can We Study Ego-Depletion Online?, Todd Allmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exercising self-control depletes a finite resource of energy and reduces the ability to control behavior on subsequent tasks. Baumeister and others refer to the attenuation of self-regulation as ego depletion. Recent research has successfully utilized computer based depletion manipulations and measures. Previous research has focused on depletion tasks and measures in a laboratory setting, but no known research has extended ego depletion research to the online environment. The present study attempted to manipulate and measure ego-depletion through an online medium. We hypothesized that participants in the online experimental condition would perform significantly worse on two measures of depletion than participants …