Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. Yet in five studies (total N = 1,674), failure did the opposite: It undermined learning. Across studies, participants answered binary-choice ...questions, following which they were told they answered correctly (success feedback) or incorrectly (failure feedback). Both types of feedback conveyed the correct answer, because there were only two answer choices. However, on a follow-up test, participants learned less from failure feedback than from success feedback. This effect was replicated across professional, linguistic, and social domains—even when learning from failure was less cognitively taxing than learning from success and even when learning was incentivized. Participants who received failure feedback also remembered fewer of their answer choices. Why does failure undermine learning? Failure is ego threatening, which causes people to tune out. Participants learned less from personal failure than from personal success, yet they learned just as much from other people’s failure as from others’ success. Thus, when ego concerns are muted, people tune in and learn from failure.
We conducted a preregistered multilaboratory project (k = 36; N = 3,531) to assess the size and robustness of ego-depletion effects using a novel replication method, termed the paradigmatic ...replication approach. Each laboratory implemented one of two procedures that was intended to manipulate self-control and tested performance on a subsequent measure of self-control. Confirmatory tests found a nonsignificant result (d = 0.06). Confirmatory Bayesian meta-analyses using an informed-prior hypothesis (δ = 0.30, SD = 0.15) found that the data were 4 times more likely under the null than the alternative hypothesis. Hence, preregistered analyses did not find evidence for a depletion effect. Exploratory analyses on the full sample (i.e., ignoring exclusion criteria) found a statistically significant effect (d = 0.08); Bayesian analyses showed that the data were about equally likely under the null and informed-prior hypotheses. Exploratory moderator tests suggested that the depletion effect was larger for participants who reported more fatigue but was not moderated by trait self-control, willpower beliefs, or action orientation.
Longitudinal inquiry has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful method for seeking understanding of psychological development. A 30-year longitudinal venture is described-its theoretical ...motivation, methodological rationale, and details of implementation. Some of the novel and implicative findings the study has generated are briefly described. Common to all of the results is an absolute reliance on long-term, widely ranging, independent data. Although specific aspects of the study have appeared over the years, its intentions and scope are recounted only here. By and large, the organizing constructs of ego-control and ego-resiliency find impressive support in various empirical inquiries, here quickly described. Methodologically, a number of savvy research procedures useful and perhaps even necessary in longitudinal research are conveyed. The troublesome burdens but ever-alluring attractions of longitudinal inquiry are noted. A forthcoming Web site will contain the extensive 30-year longitudinal data bank together with explanatory information. Psychological investigators may find these imminently available data resources useful.
This study presents a multi-sensor fusion approach to monitor the fine-abrasive polishing process for finishing small, diamond-coated spherical Si shells. These shells serve as fuel capsules for the ...Inertial Confinement Nuclear Fusion (ICF) experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The success of the nuclear fusion reaction to an ignition stage critically depends on ensuring the ultrafine surface finish of the shell surfaces, mostly devoid of microscale pits. However, collisions among shells during polishing may damage their surface quality. Contemporary sensor-based monitoring methods have severe shortcomings in tracking the interactions of highly occluded and dynamically complex polishing processes. Towards addressing this challenge, we equipped the polishing setup with a vibration sensor and a camera to synchronously monitor the shell interactions with 0.1 s precision. We employed a Bayesian unsupervised learning approach, EGO-MDA, to identify frequency bands that differentiate between the energy levels when the shells are together and far apart. Our findings reveal that two frequency bands of vibration signals in the 1–2.5 kHz range suffice to achieve this classification, with an accuracy of 80%. We adapted the Local Interpretation Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) to identify the important frequency signature from the vibration signals that can identify the onset of a prominent collision event. Our findings indicate that vibration signals exhibit a 25% higher energy over a 0.1 s interval within the 1.3 kHz and 2.25 kHz bands at the time of the onset of a prominent collision event. These results establish the feasibility of employing vibration sensors to monitor severe interaction events.
•Detection of subtle shell interaction using sensing technologies and ML algorithms.•Utilized CNN and EGO-MDA to identify frequency bands sensitive to shell interactions.•Identified time-frequency signatures to distinguish prominent shell interactions.
The literature to date has predominantly focused on the benefits of ethical leader behaviors for recipients (e.g., employees and teams). Adopting an actor-centric perspective, in this study we ...examined whether exhibiting ethical leader behaviors may come at some cost to leaders. Drawing from ego depletion and moral licensing theories, we explored the potential challenges of ethical leader behavior for actors. Across 2 studies which employed multiwave designs that tracked behaviors over consecutive days, we found that leaders' displays of ethical behavior were positively associated with increases in abusive behavior the following day. This association was mediated by increases in depletion and moral credits owing to their earlier displays of ethical behavior. These results suggest that attention is needed to balance the benefits of ethical leader behaviors for recipients against the challenges that such behaviors pose for actors, which include feelings of mental fatigue and psychological license and ultimately abusive interpersonal behaviors.
The purpose of this study was to examine the developmental course and implications of the personality metatraits ego resiliency and ego control across the first 3 decades of life. The sample ...consisted of 139 participants who were assessed 9 times between ages 2 and 33. Participants completed measures of ego resiliency, ego control, Big Five personality traits, identity development, and positive and negative well-being. The findings indicated strong stability of ego resiliency, in terms of both rank-order and mean-level change. Ego control also demonstrated stability over the full time span, but there was greater change in childhood relative to adolescence and adulthood. Ego resiliency and control were associated with adult well-being, but these associations were generally accounted for by the Big Five traits. Finally, there were small relations between ego resiliency and control in childhood and later adult identity development processes.
Incivility at work-low intensity deviant behaviors with an ambiguous intent to harm-has been on the rise, yielding negative consequences for employees' well-being and companies' bottom-lines. ...Although examinations of incivility have gained momentum in organizational research, theory and empirical tests involving dynamic, within-person processes associated with this negative interpersonal behavior are limited. Drawing from ego depletion theory, we test how experiencing incivility precipitates instigating incivility toward others at work via reduced self-control. Using an experience sampling design across 2 work weeks, we found that experiencing incivility earlier in the day reduced one's levels of self-control (captured via a performance-based measure of self-control), which in turn resulted in increased instigated incivility later in the day. Moreover, organizational politics-a stable, environmental factor-strengthened the relation between experienced incivility and reduced self-control, whereas construal level-a stable, personal factor-weakened the relation between reduced self-control and instigated incivility. Combined, our results yield multiple theoretical, empirical, and practical implications for the study of incivility at work.
Background
The quantity of social relationships and social interactions is positively related to well‐being, but the underlying role of personality dispositions in these associations is unclear. The ...present study investigated whether social motives for affiliation and intimacy moderate associations of personal networks with well‐being.
Method
We analyzed data from N = 389 individuals living alone (aged 35–60 years) who provided self‐reports of social motives and well‐being, and who completed an ego‐centered social network task. A subsample of N = 331 individuals participated in a social network diary with daily questions about social interactions within their personal networks.
Results
Overall, we found little support for moderations. Individuals higher in affiliation felt less lonely than individuals lower in affiliation when having more frequent in‐person contact. Multilevel analyses of the diary data revealed that highly affiliative individuals reported being more satisfied than individuals lower in affiliation when having more daily social interactions than usual. No moderations were found in the context of intimacy.
Discussion
Findings suggest that, especially in the context of daily social encounters, affiliation might moderate associations of social interaction quantity with well‐being. Implications for future research on personality–relationship dynamics in personal networks and daily social interactions are discussed.
It is not well known that The Ego and the Id, where Freud presented his second model of the mind, and introduced a new role for the Ego, was ignored by many of the major theorists that followed. I ...will attempt to demonstrate the importance of this new view of the ego for clinical psychoanalysis, and what has been lost by its being ignored.
Inhibition is a major form of self-regulation. As such, it depends on self-awareness and comparing oneself to standards and is also susceptible to fluctuations in willpower resources. Ego depletion ...is the state of reduced willpower caused by prior exertion of self-control. Ego depletion undermines inhibition both because restraints are weaker and because urges are felt more intensely than usual. Conscious inhibition of desires is a pervasive feature of everyday life and may be a requirement of life in civilized, cultural society, and in that sense it goes to the evolved core of human nature. Intentional inhibition not only restrains antisocial impulses but can also facilitate optimal performance, such as during test taking. Self-regulation and ego depletion— may also affect less intentional forms of inhibition, even chronic tendencies to inhibit. Broadly stated, inhibition is necessary for human social life and nearly all societies encourage and enforce it.
•Inhibition is crucial for human social life. Both automatic and intentional forms are common.•Self-regulation depends on limited energy. Depleted willpower fosters disinhibited behavior.•Inhibition can facilitate performance, such as among test anxious students.•Desires feel stronger when willpower is depleted, suggesting that chronic inhibition is weakened.•Despite challenges and updates, the limited energy model of self-regulation remains the best fit.
PDF
