Depletion influences restraint, but does it influence conflict identification? Expanding on Osgood and Muraven (2015)

Abstract

Osgood and Muraven (2015) show that cognitive depletion reduces pro-social behaviors, but not pro-social attitudes. We expand on the authors’ interpretation by relating their results to recent theorizing on the relationship between pro-social behavior and self-control. This framework distinguishes between the proclivity to identify self-control conflict and the capacity to exercise restraint. Osgood and Muraven’s (2015) findings can be interpreted as evidence that cognitive depletion in social contexts fails to influence a necessary condition for identifying self-control conflict. However, the results do not yet allow us to conclude that depletion influences capacity to exercise restraint. Further work is needed to understand the mechanisms by which cognitive depletion influences pro-social behavior.