You Wear Me Out The Vicarious Depletion of Self-Control

摘要

Acts of self-control may deplete an indiυidual's self-regulatory resources. But what are the consequences of perceiving other people's use of self-control? Mentally simulating the actions of others has been found to elicit psychological effects consistent with the actual perfor_mance of those actions. Here, we consider how simulatingversus merely perceiυing the use of willpower can affect self-control abilities. In Study 1, participants who simu_lated the perspective of a person exercising self-control exhibited less restraint over spending on consumer prod_ucts than did other participants. In Study 2, participants who took the perspective of a person using self-control exerted less willpower on an unrelated lexical generation task than did participants who took the perspective of a person who did not use self-control. Conversely, par_ticipants who merely read about another person's self-control exerted more willpower than did those who read about actions not requiring self-control. These findings suggest that the actions of other people may either deplete or boost one's own self-control, depending on whether one mentally simulates those actions or merely perceives them.