Self-reports from behind the scenes: Questionable research practices and rates of replication in ego depletion research

The strength model of self-control is one of the most influential and well-established models of self-regulation in social psychology. However, recent attempts to replicate the ego depletion effect have sometimes failed. The goal of this study is to investigate self-reported replication rates and the frequency of a set of questionable research practices (QRP) in ego depletion research. A literature search resulted in 1721 researchers who had previously published on ego depletion. They were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. The respondents (n = 277), on average, had published over three papers on ego depletion, and had completed more than two additional, unpublished studies. Respondents indicated that in more than 40% of their studies, results were similar in magnitude to those reported in the existing literature, and more than 60% reported conducting a priori power analyses. 39.2% of respondents were aware of other researchers who engaged in the surveyed QRP’s, while 37.7% affirmed to have employed said QRP’s. These results underline the importance of reducing QRP’s to reliably test the validity of the ego depletion effect.

自我控制力量模型（strength model of self-control）是社会心理学领域最具影响力且久经验证的自我调节模型之一。然而，近期针对自我损耗效应（ego depletion effect）的重复验证尝试有时并未取得成功。本研究旨在探究自我损耗研究领域中，自我报告的重复验证率，以及一系列可疑研究操作（questionable research practices，QRP）的发生频率。研究团队通过文献检索，筛选出1721名曾发表过自我损耗相关研究的研究者，并邀请其参与匿名在线问卷调查。本次调查共获得277名有效受访者（n=277），其平均已发表3篇以上自我损耗相关学术论文，且完成过2项以上未发表的同类研究。受访者反馈，其开展的研究中有超过40%的结果效应量与现有文献报道的结果相近，且超过60%的受访者表示曾开展事前效力分析。39.2%的受访者表示知晓存在其他研究者实施了本次调研涉及的可疑研究操作，另有37.7%的受访者承认自身曾采用过此类操作。上述结果凸显了减少可疑研究操作，以可靠检验自我损耗效应效度的重要性。