Essay On Ego Depletion

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Ego Depletions Effect on The Economy Stress on our rational mind can lead to risky decisions when spending our money. Almost every day, Americans spend most of the time in school or work, exerting self-control on miserable tasks. According to Kahneman’s work, “Baumeister’s group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around” (41). This is described by Kahneman as the lazy system 2. After a long day of hard work, our brains refuse to make judgments, and instead rely on our emotions and instincts, rather than our rational. The reliance on emotions and instincts leads to impulsive decisions that can be risky. This lack of good judgment when we are ego-depleted can be seen in the experiment done with the judges who would review parole requests. When they were ego-depleted, the “tired and hungry judges [would] tend to fall back on the easier default position of denying requests for parole” (Kahneman 44). This portrays how lazy our system 2 really is and how ego-depletion leads to a lack of self-control, not allowing us to make good judgments by using our rational minds. Since we lack discipline to control ourselves, we tend to make impulsive decisions that can be risky. These impulsive decisions impact the economy dramatically, either helping it prosper or sending it into shambles. Ego-depletion indirectly helps strengthen the economy. According to Building Self Control, ego-depletions effect on consumers is seen in the strength model, which “assumes that a consumer’s ability to control urges to engage in impulsive buying can become temporarily depleted as a result of pr... ... middle of paper ... ...ower prices bringing down the value of homes. Consequently, less money is spent to purchases the houses, which stops new investments in the construction of homes. The lack of new investments brings unemployment for workers in the construction field, thus leaving them with less money to spend on other businesses. This begins a cycle in which everyone has less money to spend, creating an economic crisis. This is exactly what occurred in the economic crisis of 2008. Although some may say that financial institutions were the ones to blame for the economic crisis since they were the ones to offer buyers the risky loans, it was ultimately the fault of ego-depletion for not allowing people to judge the loan options thoroughly in order to take on the safest loan. In conclusion, ego-depletion leads to impulsive decisions when choosing a loan, resulting in an economic crisis.

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