Self-control failures occur because self-control draws on a limited, depletable resource
Weak-link patterns
Brief §8's named failure modes, computed from this claim's own paper roles and status -- not a single weakness score. Patterns B and E aren't implemented yet (need dependency-graph machinery, docs/BASIC_ROADMAP.md Phase 11).
stored status is 'unknown_conflicting'
Open questions
Pattern G. Human-written, never generated -- deliberately no importance or priority score (docs/BASIC_ROADMAP.md's own precedent against inventing one, matching innovation_considerations).
Does ego depletion exist as a real, smaller-than-originally-claimed effect, or was the original effect size substantially inflated by publication bias -- as the multilab preregistered replication failure suggests?
Motivated by: Pattern C (conflicting evidence, though the rule chain resolves this one via a human-judgment clause rather than a pattern count)
Evidence map
Position shows direction, circle area shows citation count. Click a paper for the reason its role was assigned.
Evidence dimensions
Eight independent 0–5 judgments, each with a written rationale. Deliberately never summed into one score.
Many small original studies, but the single largest, most rigorous test (the RRR) found null.
One of the most-replicated paradigms in social psychology - replication attempts are not scarce.
The definitive independent multi-lab test found a pooled effect near zero.
Evidence is same-paradigm replication plus meta-analytic synthesis; synthesis is not a different method of testing the claim.
Original-era studies used small, non-preregistered samples typical of pre-2011 social psychology; the one high-quality test is the one that came back null.
The theory's own proposed mechanism (glucose depletion) has itself not held up well in later work.
Field consensus shifted substantially toward skepticism after 2016.
Well-articulated competing accounts exist (expectancy/motivational effects, publication bias) - many live alternatives.
Scored by human.
Why this status
The derivation rule, evaluated top to bottom, first match wins. This is the rule itself — not a confidence score standing in for one.
This status rests on a human judgment, not the automated chain
Replaying only the machine-checkable conditions yields Preliminary, while the recorded status is Unknown — conflicting evidence. That is not a contradiction: rule 2 was specified as a judgment against a written criterion rather than a count, so a person reading the papers can reach it where this replay cannot. The stored value is authoritative; it is shown here so the difference is visible instead of implied.
- 1Unknown — unexplored
4 paper rows (needs <3) and evidence_strength=2 (needs <=1); both required
- 2Unknown — conflicting evidenceneeds human judgment
(a) 1 failure vs 0 success rows -> no; (b) 2 review rows — opposite-verdict test is a human judgment, not a count; (c) 0 conceptual failure vs 0 conceptual success, 1 original -> no
- 3Unknown — underdetermined
alternative_explanations=2 (needs <=1) AND evidence_strength=2 (needs >=3)
- 4Established
independent_replication=1 (>=4), evidence_strength=2 (>=4), consensus=2 (>=4)
- 5Strong, domain-limited
evidence_strength=2 (>=4) AND independent_replication=1 (>=3), plus a written scope limit (human judgment)
- 6Active consensus, incomplete
consensus=2 (>=4) AND (methodological_quality=2 <=3 OR alternative_explanations=2 <=2)
- 7Plausible, under active investigation
independent_replication=1 (needs ==2) AND evidence_strength=2 (needs 2-3), plus recent activity (human judgment)
- 8Speculative
1/4 rows are empirical (needs 0) AND evidence_strength=2 (needs <=1)
- 9Preliminarymatched
4 non-theoretical row(s) exist AND independent_replication=1 (needs <=1)
Recorded rationale
v3 rule 2, clause (b): two review rows reach documented opposite verdicts - Carter & McCullough (2014, skeptical, pre-RRR) and Dang (2017, small residual effect, post-RRR). Naive citation-only guess was 'established'; divergence material. Pilot 1.