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This paper is a collaboration between chair of Sport Psychology members Wanja Wolff and Lorena Baumann with Chris Englert (with the chair of Pedagogical Psychology at the University of Bern). They surveyed researchers with experience in self-control research regarding their experiences and their engagement with QRP's. Since the ego depletion effect is one of the most frequently cited and most critically debated explanations for self-control failures, this paper is an important step in trying to understand why this literature is so heterogenous and why recent large-scale replication attempts have failed. On average, the surveys participants had published over three papers on ego depletion, and had completed more than two additional, unpublished studies.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 point to a substantial body of grey literature, which might have led to an overestimation of the ego depletion effect. Further, compared to other fields, the results do not point towards a widespread engagement in QRP's. Still, these findings underline the importance of reducing QRP’s in order to reliably test the validity of the ego depletion effect.

At the chair of sport psychology, we are interested in the psychoneurophysiological correlates of self-controlled sports performance. Specifically, we are interested in how self-regulation strategies can be used to improve sports performance. (click here to learn more). Therefore, it is paramount to our research interests to better understand when and why acts of self-control fail.