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Here's a much better article on the topic by Dan Ariely. This is one of his primary areas of research, and he addresses it in his books (including a description of his experiments).

http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/

I made a separate submission for the above link, it deserves it.

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Thanks Diego, I checked out the posting you linked and you're right, he definitely raises other highly relevant issues, probably much more eloquently than I did in my own article.

The mental resource that is being impacted by such things as exercising self-control seems to go far beyond anything we typically define as 'ego' as in self-image and I think the implications are therefore even more wide-ranging than ego-depletion, although he does seem to imply that he appreciates this.

"ego depletion"... sounds like something from zen buddhism

Some koans have the goal of exhausting this kind of reserve through trying to deeply explore and attempt to solve a paradox. I think the intent is to gain experience of this kind of depletion to better understand its impacts (at least from my experience of it).

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