That's quite a title. "You know I don't speak Spanish."
Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
11–20 of 89 posts
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#12It feels like the fact that this is a bayesian-favoured study is some kind of sign that people (i.e. people that are upvoting, not necessarily the researchers) are actually taking that silly bayesian vs frequentist political war thing seriously. (Which I don't think is advisable.)
I agree, there is no reason to mention "bayesian" in the title other than using it as a hype term like "blockchain" or "deep learning". Also, the real difference is whether they test a "null hypothesis" vs testing an "actual hypothesis". Like almost all psych, this falls in the first category.
You say this but then you go read a paper with a cruddy t-test and then injure your eyes with the spasmodic rolling that it induces, like I did.
It's kinda remarkable how many people don't actually use modern bayesian analysis techniques, which is why it's such a policy war. It's the difference between "older statistical methods uninformed by the glut of modern processing power" and "things which require a computer to do well, and preserve uncertainty."
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#13ELI5?
Basically, there was a theory that exercising self-control would "deplete" ones "self-control reserves". The idea was that exercising your self-control, to say avoid a junk food, would temporarily decrease your ability to resist that temptation again. This paper reports that not only were they unable to verify any of the prior research into this so called "ego depletion" effect, but they found more persuasive evidenc…
This is reassuring. Every time someone told me this I figured it had to be bullshit. I think people used it as an excuse to make bad decisions.
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#14It's disappointing to see links to the abstracts on the front page of HN (given the paper itself is behind a paywall). In this case, the find some non-zero effect, but call it zero because the difference was not statistically significant. That's likely a reflection of their small sample size rather than evidence for the null hypothesis as the title suggests. But it's hard to know, or even have an intelligent discussi…
It's on sci-hub: http://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/bjso.12236
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#15It's disappointing to see links to the abstracts on the front page of HN (given the paper itself is behind a paywall). In this case, the find some non-zero effect, but call it zero because the difference was not statistically significant. That's likely a reflection of their small sample size rather than evidence for the null hypothesis as the title suggests. But it's hard to know, or even have an intelligent discussi…
Sample size is, of course, one of the factors included in any analysis that gives you a p-value, or any other measure of confidence.
In this case, the abstract specifically mentions a "Bayes factor > 25". The Bayes Factor is the likelihood, i. e. the ratio of probabilities for two competing hypotheses. With no information whatsoever, it is 1. A factor of 25 means that the null hypothesis is 25 times as likely to be correct as the theory of ego depletion.
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#16It's disappointing to see links to the abstracts on the front page of HN (given the paper itself is behind a paywall). In this case, the find some non-zero effect, but call it zero because the difference was not statistically significant. That's likely a reflection of their small sample size rather than evidence for the null hypothesis as the title suggests. But it's hard to know, or even have an intelligent discussi…
> In this case, the find some non-zero effect, but call it zero because the difference was not statistically significant.
Neither the title of the paper nor the abstract say there is zero effect. They accurately and precisely state that the null hypothesis is favored and that the effect is not significantly different than zero.
> That's likely a reflection of their small sample size rather than evidence for the null hypothesis as the title suggests.
That doesn't seem to be the case. From the introduction:
> The Hagger et al. (2010) meta-analysis reported an estimated depletion effect size of d = .62, which we used to conduct a power analysis to establish sample size (n = 33) at 0.80 power. We established n = 35 per condition for our studies, which is slightly larger than the average sample size in the published depletion literature of n = 27 (Lurquin et al., 2016), because the intent of this series of studies was to examine empirically the frequency of null findings in studies similar in size and procedures to those in the published literature. The use of a similar sample size allows for an empirical examination of how frequently the depletion effect occurs when using methods and sample size similar to those in the pre-2013 published literature.
So if their samples sizes are a problem then it's a problem that the rest of the literature has too.
> But it's hard to know, or even have an intelligent discussion about it, since the paper itself is behind a paywall.
Agreed paywalls are unhelpful, but that doesn't mean we can't intelligently discuss what information is available. In addition, I and probably many other people on this forum do have access to many paywalled papers, so exact information is not exactly impossible to obtain.
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#17ELI5?
Ego depletion isn't real.
To me, this is an interesting statement because it highlights the difference between true and useful.
For several years, since I read the book Willpower (an intro piece to ego depletion), I've meditated on the idea. I've decided that even if it's not scientifically true, it can be useful to me.
Some may see it as self-help tripe ("Eat your frogs in the morning!"), but it's a useful mental model for me to push myself to get stuff done sooner, rather than later, because I imagine myself not having the willpower later.
Your choice of word -- real -- was probably casual, but I think a better term would be "scientifically valid". There are many things that aren't replicable that have use to many humans.
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#18I always get the feeling from reading academic material on psychology that people are trying to apply the scientific method on top of unscientific principles. It feels rather like alchemists trying to explain fire via phlogiston: an attempt to quantify high-level phenomena when you don't understand any of the lower levels.
All the data comes from psychology students at a college in the US who either were able to use their participation for a course requirement or given extra credit. The method by which they generated and measured depletion seems adequate, but all the data is self reported based on how the test subjects felt.
The statistics gives evidence linking the amount of generated depletion and the reported depletion, but not any insight into what mechanism actually causes depletion. What use is this? Why build a map when we cannot effectively observe the territory?
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ego depletion isn't real.
To me, this is an interesting statement because it highlights the difference between true and useful. For several years, since I read the book Willpower (an intro piece to ego depletion), I've meditated on the idea. I've decided that even if it's not scientifically true, it can be useful to me. Some may see it as self-help tripe ("Eat your frogs in the morning!"), but it's a useful mental model for me to push myself…
Just because the effect isn't real doesn't mean the system can't be beneficial. There's hundreds of millions of people all over the world who benefit from a Abrahamic worldview.
The word superstition has negative connotations, but perhaps wrongly so.
Also, some aspects of ego depletion are grounded in science. Just because this particular model isn't valid, doesn't mean there's no valid model for ego depletion.
Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ego depletion isn't real.
To me, this is an interesting statement because it highlights the difference between true and useful. For several years, since I read the book Willpower (an intro piece to ego depletion), I've meditated on the idea. I've decided that even if it's not scientifically true, it can be useful to me. Some may see it as self-help tripe ("Eat your frogs in the morning!"), but it's a useful mental model for me to push myself…
I started using animism yesterday to motivate me to do the dishes, viewing them as the physical embodiment of souls that I, their god, allowed to get moldy/rusty through neglect.
I think when we introduce choice/attention into the theory that we construct reality out of beliefs, emotions, culture (thought/behavior patterns), and intentions, it's possible to find all kinds of useful frameworks.
Maybe the idea of "scientific validity" needs to be adapted for subjective experiences constructed by us.