Using self-control makes the next act of self-control harder

This note is here because its sources disagree. The claim, known as ego depletion, holds that self-control draws on a limited resource. A 2010 meta-analysis of 83 studies found a significant effect. In 2016, 23 laboratories ran the same preregistered protocol with 2,141 participants and found an effect close to zero (d = 0.04, with a confidence interval that included zero). Both are serious work. They differ in what they measured: one pooled published studies, the other fixed its method in advance and ran it everywhere. Neither settles the question alone, which is why the refuting citation sits in the same list as the supporting one.