Moral Fatigue
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In the world of social psychology, “ego depletion” refers to the theory that making difficult decisions, especially those that are relevant to future outcomes, drains us, and in doing so reduces our capacity to make smart long-term decisions.
Smart, in this context, means optimal for our preferred outcomes, and long-term could be any amount of time. The fundamental takeaway from this concept is that doing things that are good investments for our future selves has a cost, and at a certain point we begin to run low on fuel. At that point, making smart choices for our future selves becomes more difficult, more draining, and even potentially out of reach, despite our usual capacity for such things.
The dominant theory at the moment is that these types of decisions and actions are more cognitively costly because they don’t have immediate payout, and thus, don’t provide immediate gratification. We have to force ourselves to behave in this way, and that requires that our brains work a little harder to stave off the desires of the more primitive, instant-gratification-desiring portions of our brains.
The fuel our brains consume, in a biological sense, is glucose, and early research into this effect posited that reduced blood glucose could be the cause of this diminished fore-thinking capability.
Further research, though, indicates that this probably isn’t the case, and other research has tied ego depletion to upbringing, heart rate variability—the amount of time that passes between heartbeats in an individual, on average—and age; perhaps indicating that there’s a learned self-control element to this concept, and that it’s possible to train oneself to avoid the worst effects of ego depletion, at least in some contexts.
Important to note here is that quite a few ego depletion-related studies have been difficult to replicate, and the concept has been at the center of the replication crisis that has been roiling the field of psychology.
Modern science works in part because we have mechanisms through which we can check each other’s findings, and a whole lot of work that’s been published, and thus, accepted by many as true things that we should take seriously, haven’t been replicated by other scientific teams with appropriate thoroughness, or in some cases, at all.
Which rightfully brings concepts like ego depletion under increased scrutiny, as some of the underlying premises have been supported by further studies conducted by different teams of researchers, but not all have. And as a result, it’s prudent to take any claim related to this and adjacent subjects with a grain of salt.
That said, there is evidence that making difficult decisions, especially those associated with future outcomes, is taxing on our brains and bodies in a way that seems to make future decisions of the same kind more difficult.
There’s also evidence that such decision-making can increase our perceived levels of fatigue, and can change our moment to moment practical beliefs.
Meaning, it probably doesn’t influence our overall belief systems and ideologies, but this type of exhaustion does seem to partially shape the choices we make in the moment, including moral judgements and our interpretation of our own behaviors and the behaviors of others.
This concept is especially relevant in moments of heightened stress, because it implies that we perhaps don’t perform the most accurate of assessments when under the influence of this effect. The more stressed and mentally exhausted we are, the greater the chance that we will behave in a manner that doesn’t reflect who we are on a deeper level.
Another concept within this same theoretical space is often called “moral fatigue,” and it shares many of the same attributes as ego depletion, except that it applies primarily to the drained feeling we can experience after having to face moral conflicts, in particular.
Trying to decide whether to buy a gadget online, for instance, can be morally draining if you’re not certain that the purchase is worth the risks taken by the many people involved in the supply chain to get the product from its manufacturing origin to your door.
This is even more evident when there are unusual circumstances at play, like during a pandemic, where there are arguably more important things that need to get from point A to point B, and the people boxing up gadgets and delivering them to homes are almost certainly at greater risk of catching the disease-of-the-moment than you are.
Deciding whether you want to support the company that is manufacturing the product, and the companies that serve as intermediaries, selling and delivering the product, as well, can also be a moral quandary.
Would it be better to buy that gadget from a smaller, local retailer, even if it costs a little bit more to do so? Would that actually benefit anyone? Or might your actions actually hurt more people than they help?
Even deciding whether to buy a gadget on Amazon, then, can be a morally draining process, influencing our subsequent behaviors, choices, and perceptions.
This type of fatigue has been especially well-researched within the medical field, in part because the choices made by medical professionals are often quite literally life and death, but also because nurses and doctors and receptionists who deal with people who are having the worst day of their lives, all day, every day, cope with an incredible amount of this type of fatigue constantly. And while thus fatigued, they must also make vital, moral choices, while continuing to perform at a high-level, overall.
The upside is that research has hinted at the possibility that people who approach their work with what’s called positive affect—a loosely defined trait that is possibly trainable, and which essentially means looking for the positive in any situation, focusing on the upsides, and deciding to make the best of whatever comes one’s way— has been associated with improved dopamine release, even during stressful situations.
Such dopamine release can temporarily improve one’s motor functions, emotional processing, and cognitive capabilities, which implies that positive thinking can potentially help us ameliorate the downsides of stress, exhaustion, and fatigue, whatever the sources of these negative factors.
The downside is that some people may find adopting this outlook trickier than others, based on all kinds of internal and external variables. It’s also tricky to measure the specific, hard-number benefits of a positive perspective, because much of the measurements that’re taken are by necessity self-reported.
That said, especially during periods of increased stress and moral decision-making, the research we do have indicates that a nudge toward optimism—alongside holistic health behaviors, like eating well, working out, and getting plenty of sleep—might be one of the more effective broad-spectrum remedies we can apply.
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