Social Exclusion: ego depletion and self-awareness

Previous research investigating ego depletion has found that self-control actions yield a state of ego depletion. Ego depletion occurs after the reserve of limited resources necessary for self-regulation are depleted (Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M., 1998). This study sought to generalize the detrimental effects of ego depletion to cognitive performance and, in addition, determine whether self-awareness would alleviate ego depletion in participants, thereby reducing (or eliminating) it’s effect on cognitive performance. The current study utilized three different tasks to elicit ego depletion (control group no ego depletion), difficult math task, or social exclusion task. A self-awareness manipulation was included in the study utilizing two writing assignment (self-awareness prompt or neutral prompt). Results indicated a main effect of ego depletion, indicating that participants within the social exclusion group demonstrated a larger deficit in cognitive task performance than the control group. No interaction was found between the factors, which indicates that self-awareness did not alleviate ego depletion in this study. Future research should investigate ways to alleviate ego depletion or even to strengthen self-control to deflect ego depletion following social exclusion experiences.