Ego-depletion or mental fatigue? Commentary: “Strong Effort Manipulations Reduce Response Caution: A Preregistered Reinvention of the Ego-Depletion Paradigm”

Ego-depletion has been one of the most criticized psychological phenomena these past years. New approaches have been proposed to increase its replicability, but often failed, mostly due to inaccurate conceptions that misguided methodological decisions, such as inappropriate tasks choice. In this commentary, we question the reinvention of the ego-depletion paradigm claimed by Lin et al. (2020). Specifically, we discuss the absence of a comprehensive definition of self-control, which is central to the concept of ego-depletion, the lack of distinction between ego-depletion and mental fatigue, and the depleting task chosen to induce ego-depletion that we deem inappropriate. We propose some conceptual clarifications to promote the implementation of rigorous methods in ego-depletion research.