Action Versus State Orientation and Self-Control Performance After Depletion

Three studies investigated the role of action versus state orientation in how people deal with depletion of self-control resources. action-oriented persons were expected to continue allocating resources and hence to perform better than state-oriented persons who were expected to conserve strength. consistent with this,action-oriented persons performed better on the d2 test of attention than state-oriented persons after a strenuous physical exercise (study 1),showed higher acuity on the critical fusion frequency test after a test of vigilance (study 2),and performed better on the stroop test after a depleting sensorimotor task (study 3). no differences emerged between action- and state-oriented persons in their initial performance and in a non-depleting context. the impact of depletion on subsequent performance is thus not fixed,but moderated by personality. © 2014 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.