Abstract
Ego depletion is mental exhaustion from regulation of conflicting internal desires. We hypothesized that this exhaustion would cause a pessimistic outlook on futureevent thinking. Eighty-one university students were given a simple reading task designed to deplete the egos of half the subjects ( experimental group) and have no effect on the other half ( control group). Following the task they were given the Future Events Scale (FES) to assess how positive or negative they viewed their future. Those who were ego-depleted scored lower on the FES (p< .044) than those who weren't. This suggests that ego depletion is part of the causal chain of hopelessness depression, because those with a lower score on the FES have a more hopeless attitude.
Recommended Citation
(2007)
"Ego Depletion: A contributing factor of hopelessness depression,"
Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology: Vol. 3:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/intuition/vol3/iss1/4