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Stereotypes are cognitive heuristics used by all individuals. Researchers studying bigotry have demonstrated that individuals often expose underlying stereotypical racial biases when using less effortful processing (e.g. Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Miarmi & DeBono, 2007). It is well-established in the resource depletion literature that acting beyond natural impulses requires self-regulation. However, the capacity for self-regulation is limited; prior acts of self-regulation deplete regulatory resources, hence temporarily decreasing the ability to self-regulate. The objective of this study was to examine if resource depletion leads to greater expressions of bigotry. More specifically, self-regulation failure was studied from the emotion resource depletion perspective. Even if resources are depleted however, some individuals may be more motivated than others to suppress their biases. Egalitarianism, a value system that emphasizes equal treatment for all, may be an individual difference that influences this motivation. Thus, egalitarianism was examined as a potential moderator of the resource depletion effect. In the current study, 100 participants were randomly assigned to an emotion suppression or a control condition as they watched a race-relevant social injustice video. Then, participants were given the opportunity to express bigotry through responses to a survey assessing reactions to racial microaggressions. Research findings provide evidence for an emotion resource depletion effect in that individuals suppressing their emotions while watching the video expressed greater bigotry on the survey. Additionally, the results also demonstrated a negative relationship between egalitarianism and expressions of bigotry. Although the interaction effect was not found on the full sample, exploratory gender subgroup analyses suggest that gender is a potential moderator of the interaction between emotion suppression and egalitarianism on expressions of bigotry. Within the male sample, relative to participants scoring low on egalitarianism, high egalitarian participants in the emotional suppression condition showed a greater rate of emotional resource depletion due to the video and in turn showed greater levels of bigotry. In contrast, the evidence was only consistent with an egalitarianism main effect for female participants. Thus, findings from the study demonstrate that aside from cognitive-based depleting tasks, emotion resource depletion can also lead to self-regulation failure in terms of expressions of bigotry. Although the resource depletion effect was robust, there are several limitations in this study that need to be addressed in future research. This includes collecting a more genderbalanced sample so gender can be analyzed as part of a three-way interaction to determine the impact gender had on the model. Furthermore, there was a persisting model misspecification issue; in an ongoing replication study, a measure on agreeableness has been included to assess if this was part of the missing variable problem. Finally, the two self-regulation tasks in the current study were domain-specific in the sense that they were both racially-relevant. Next steps include testing the domain-general argument of the resource depletion effect; that is, if selfregulation failure from emotion suppression would still be observed if the two self-regulation tasks were not related through the context of race. / M.S. / Stereotypes are cognitive heuristics used by all individuals. Researchers studying bigotry have demonstrated that individuals often expose underlying stereotypical racial biases when they rely on more automatic thought-associations as they process situations. It is well-established in research that acting beyond these natural impulses requires self-regulation. For example, one study showed that self-regulation effort was required to suppress the automatic association between African-Americans and negative traits such as hostility and recklessness (Muraven, 2008). However, our capacity to effectively self-regulate is limited; prior acts of self-regulation deplete regulatory resources, hence temporarily decreasing the self-regulation ability. The objective of this study was to examine if resource depletion (i.e. practicing self-regulation and using those regulatory resources) leads to greater expressions of bigotry, and particularly to understand the role of emotions in this process. However, even if resources are depleted, some individuals may be more motivated than others to suppress their biases. Egalitarianism, a value system that emphasizes equal treatment for all, may be an individual difference that influences this motivation. Thus, egalitarianism was examined as a potential moderator of the resource depletion effect. 100 participants were randomly assigned to an emotion suppression or a control condition as they watched a race-relevant social injustice video, then they responded to a survey assessing reactions to racial microaggressions. Research findings demonstrate an emotion resource depletion effect; individuals suppressing their emotions while watching the video expressed greater bigotry on the survey. Additionally, a negative relationship was found between egalitarianism and expressions of bigotry. Interestingly, gender seemed to moderate the interaction between emotion suppression and egalitarianism on expressions of bigotry. For males, relative to low egalitarians, high egalitarians who suppressed their emotions expressed greater levels of bigotry; this indicates a greater rate of emotional resource depletion experienced from watching the video. In contrast, there was no difference in emotion resource depletion in females across egalitarian values. Thus, results demonstrate how emotion resource depletion can lead to expressions of bigotry. This carries implications to our social interactions, as both emotion regulation and interracial encounters are common components of our daily lives.

Spillover research has shown that workday stress hampers commuting safety, while ego depletion research has demonstrated that prior self-regulation leads to performance decrements in subsequent tasks. This study sought to unite these two lines of research by proposing that ego depletion-induced alterations in attention and motivation are the mechanisms by which workday experiences spill over to the commute and impair driving safety. To examine the daily influences of these within-person processes on driving behavior in the post-work commute, this study adopted a daily survey design, wherein participants took an online survey immediately before and after each post-work commute across one work week. In these daily surveys, fifty-six participants (N = 56; n = 250 day-level observations) reported their workday self-regulatory demands; pre-commute levels of attention, motivation, and affective states; and driving behavior during the commute home. Using multilevel path analysis to isolate within-person effects, the current study found no evidence to suggest that workday self-regulatory demands lowered pre-commute attention and motivation, nor did it detect associations of attention and motivation with post-work aberrant driving. Results indicated that an ego depleted state might impair attention and motivation but not driving safety in the commute. Instead, the results pointed to the person-level factor of trait self-control as potentially having a greater impact on post-work aberrant driving than daily experiences. / M.S. / Research has shown that employees tend to drive more unsafely when commuting home after a stressful workday. However, most of this research has examined what about the person makes them drive more unsafely than someone else, but it is also important to understand what about the workday makes someone drive more unsafely one day than another day. I predicted that a workday containing more self-control demands would make an employee drive more unsafely when commuting home from work because facing more self-control demands would lower the employee’s attention and motivation for driving safely. To test this idea, I gave participants two online surveys per day for five consecutive days, Monday through Friday – one at the end of their workday (asking about their workday demands and current levels of attention and motivation), and one at the end of their commute home (asking about their driving behavior during that post-work commute). The data from my final sample of 56 participants (N = 56; n = 250 study days) showed no evidence to support my hypotheses: the amount of workday self-control demands was not found to associate with attention and motivation before driving home, and attention and motivation before driving home were not found to relate to driving safety during that commute home. On the other hand, I did find that a person’s general ability to maintain self-control was associated with their driving safety during the commute home (regardless of workday self-control demands). These results suggest that a person’s character might be more important in determining their day-to-day driving safety during the commute home than the self-control demands they face during the workday.

Experimental studies on willpower confirm the Strength Model of Self-Control, which claims that willpower depends on limited physiological resources. Exercising willpower depletes these resources, which impairs further exercises of willpower. This phenomenon is called “ego-depletion.” As a result, depleting these resources impairs further exercises of executive control. My thesis argues that this phenomenon has two important philosophical consequences: First, ego-depletion provides evidence against the Humean approach to motivation, according to which people always act according to their strongest desires. Second, people suffering from ego-depletion are not fully responsible for failures of self-control.

Within the realm of applications, a relatively new payment form has emerged: called Microtransactions. These small one-time payments (less than 10 Euros) offer an addendum to an existing app, service, or game. Microtransactions have generated a revenue stream largely due to the tech savvy segment of young adults aged 18 to 24, but there hasn’t been significant research from an academic perspective which sheds light on this trend. This issue prompted the research question: Which quantifiable elements of a Microtransaction contribute to a university student’s purchase decision? The phenomenon of Microtransactions has not previously been studied under traditional theories of consumer behavior, which is what the scope of this research provided. The consumer behavior theories selected include: Ego Depletion Theory, Extended Self, and Perceived Value Theory. The selected methodology was a quantitative survey and content analysis. The data collected partially supported Perceived Value Theory, but was unable to validate Ego Depletion and Extended Self as significant influences on purchasing behaviors of Microtransactions among university students. Although the theories were unable to support all our hypotheses, we still concluded with two major findings. First, pricing and functionality are the primary elements of a Microtransaction which university students will consider before purchasing. Second, the Perceived Value Theory’s consumption values of Emotion and Finance are, indeed, consumption values shared among university students.

This thesis presents six original experiments investigating the relationship between age-related gains and losses in cognitive and emotional abilities and consumer decision making. Novel tasks designed to closely resemble real consumer decisions were used to assess how older and younger adults fare when making everyday decisions. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the relationship between consumer decision making and measures of fluid intelligence, crystallised intelligence and numeric ability in older and younger adults. The data revealed that numeric ability and fluid intelligence independently predicted consumer decision making in older adults. In Experiment 1, participants made factual and inferential decisions about utility suppliers. Findings were corroborated in Experiment 2 using a larger sample and an additional consumer decision task based on selecting a mobile phone provider. Experiment 2 also revealed numeric ability as an independent predictor of young adult’s consumer decision making. Experiment 3 assessed the interplay between age, cognitive resources and emotion regulation. Cognitive resources were assessed by the number of times older and younger adults decided to stick with a pre-selected option, switch to an alternative option or decide in the future. Results suggested that older and younger adults required differing amounts of resources to regulate emotions in accordance with different emotion regulation strategies. Older adults made better consumer decisions when instructed to regulate their emotions by way of reappraisal and younger participants made better consumer decisions when instructed to regulate their emotions using suppression. These results were contrary to what was expected based on previous research on emotion regulation. Because of this, two exploratory experiments were conducted on young adults in an attempt to identify a reliable methodology for inducing and measuring affects more typically associated with self-regulation. These experiments revealed some surprising findings. Participants exposed to manipulations high in terms of cognitive demand made better subsequent consumer decisions than participants placed in less demanding conditions. It was hypothesised that participants exposed to demanding manipulations were primed to make more adaptive consumer decisions. A final experiment tested the effect of age and instruction manipulation on consumer decision making. The relationships between cognitive measures of individual differences and decision making were again measured. Results substantiated previous findings revealed in Experiments 1 and 2 insofar that fluid intelligence was found to independently predict consumer decision making performance in older adults. Fluid intelligence and numeric ability predicted consumer decision making in younger adults. In terms of instruction effects, younger and older adults made better decisions when asked to do so in a rational manner compared to an intuitive manner. It is believed that this work represents some of the first of its kind to study the impact of ageing on cognitive ability and decision making using tasks representative of existing consumer decisions in terms of context and response options. The findings presented provide a valid and unique insight into how cognitive and emotional ability changes with age and the subsequent implications this has when making consumer decisions. This thesis concludes with the theoretical and practical implications for the ageing consumer.

The aim of the current study was to examine variations in the impact of ambiguous versus blatant race related stressors on ego depletion in a sample of African American adults. Blatant race related stress was compared with ambiguous race related stress in regards to the relative impact on the constructs of ego depletion and perseverative cognition. Perseverative cognition was also examined as a potential mediating variable in the relationship between race related stress and ego depletion. Additionally, attributional ambiguity was hypothesized to moderate the effect of race related stress on perseverative cognition. The study implemented an experimental design, and assessed the integrity of the proposed moderated mediator model in a sample of 159 African American undergraduate students using MANCOVA and hierarchical multiple regression. Analyses failed to detect significant differences in ambiguous versus blatant race related stressors on perseverative cognition or ego depletion, and did not support the proposed model. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.

First part of the thesis reviews current literature on self-control, with a particular focus on the strength model of self-control. This model asserts that the ability to self-control depends on a limited resource, which gets depleted with its use. According to the model, the ability to self-control is dependent on one resource. The experimental part of the thesis purports to ascertain whether two resources can in fact be identified - one for initiatory self-control and another one for inhibitory self-control. Two types of manipulations were tested in the experiment. The results showed that one type of experimental manipulation hadn't led to any measurable depletion of initiatory self-control whilst the second type of manipulation had indeed led to results that may be interpreted as a support for distinguishing between inhibitory and initiatory self-control. It would be an interesting finding that would broaden our current knowledge about self-control if the findings of the thesis were successfully replicated in a study addressing limitations of the present research. Keywords: self-control, experiment, strength model of self-control, initiatory self-control, inhibitory self-control, Stroop task

Self-control has been defined as the ability to override or alter an automatic response. Past research has suggested that those who are higher in the personality trait neuroticism display poorer self-control. Based on theory suggesting that self-control is a limited resource, the present study attempts to explain the relationship between neuroticism and self-control. Understanding that neuroticism is characterized by emotional instability, it follows that individuals high in neuroticism must exert more self-control in managing their negative moods, thus leaving them depleted for future acts of self-control. Participants (n = 84) completed measures of trait self-control, engaged in an emotional regulation task, and then completed measures of state self-control, affect, and rumination. Results revealed no significant effect of emotional regulation on state self-control, nor a significant effect of neuroticism on state self-control. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Recent research suggests we have a limited supply of willpower, termed the “ego”, which becomes depleted by undergoing cognitively demanding tasks. Any acts of volition, including decision-making, self-control, and taking responsibility, reduce this supply of “ego” (Baumeister, 1998), which impedes our ability to further perform these tasks. Decision fatigue, a specific form of ego depletion, is prevalent everywhere from judicial court cases (Danzinger, Levav, & Avnaim-Pesso, 2010) to our daily lives. There is now significant mainstream media exposure and literature on decision fatigue and the activities to which it applies. However, it remains contested how to best handle its negative consequences. The purpose of this paper is to examine methods of addressing the adverse effects of ego depletion, particularly related to motivation.