PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource
Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative
Kathleen D. Vohs
University of Minnesota
Roy F. Baumeister
Florida State University
Brandon J. Schmeichel
Texas A&M University
Jean M. Twenge
San Diego State University
Noelle M. Nelson
University of Minnesota
Dianne M. Tice
Florida State University
The current research tested the hypothesis that making many choices impairs subsequent self-control.
Drawing from a limited-resource model of self-regulation and executive function, the authors hypothe-
sized that decision making depletes the same resource used for self-control and active responding. In 4
laboratory studies, some participants made choices among consumer goods or college course options,
whereas others thought about the same options without making choices. Making choices led to reduced
self-control (i.e., less physical stamina, reduced persistence in the face of failure, more procrastination,
and less quality and quantity of arithmetic calculations). A field study then found that reduced
self-control was predicted by shoppers’ self-reported degree of previous active decision making. Further
studies suggested that choosing is more depleting than merely deliberating and forming preferences about
options and more depleting than implementing choices made by someone else and that anticipating the
choice task as enjoyable can reduce the depleting effect for the first choices but not for many choices.
Keywords: choice, self-regulation, self-control, decision making, executive function
The rich complexity of human social life is partly attributable to
choice. Each day millions of people make multiple decisions.
These range from momentous and far-reaching decisions, such as
what career to pursue and whether to order the troops into battle,
to relatively fleeting and inconsequential choices, such as whether
to take another cup of tea or to floss that night.
Moreover, choices have proliferated, increasing the number of
decisions people can (and must) make. The diversity of consumer
product selection has expanded exponentially, such that the aver-
age American supermarket in 1976 carried 9,000 different unique
products, whereas 15 years later that figure had ballooned to
30,000 (Waldman, 1992). It is estimated that there are currently 1
million SKUs (stock keeping units, thus unique specific products)
in the US and that the average supermarket carries 40,000 of them
(Trout, 2005). The coffee shop chain Starbucks boasted in 2003
that it offered each customer 19,000 beverage possibilities at every
store. Similar proliferations of alternatives have occurred with
television channels, dating partners, investment options, and in
countless other spheres.
Has the proliferation of choice uniformly made life easier and
better? Possibly not. Consumer behavior scientists long have ob-
served that consumers feel frustrated and overwhelmed with the
intense information demands that accompany large assortments
(Huffman & Kahn, 1998; Malhotra, 1982). Iyengar and Lepper
(2000) found that consumers who faced 24 options, as opposed to
6 options, were less willing to decide to buy anything at all, and
Kathleen D. Vohs and Noelle M. Nelson, Marketing Department, Carlson
School of Management, University of Minnesota; Roy F. Baumeister and
DianneM. Tice, Department of Psychology, Florida State University; Brandon
J. Schmeichel, Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University; Jean M.
Twenge, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University.
Preparation of this article was supported by National Institutes of Health
Grant MH12794 to Kathleen D. Vohs and Grant MH 57039 to Roy F.
Baumeister, funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council to Kathleen D. Vohs, and support from the Canada Research Chair
Council and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship program to Kathleen
D. Vohs. We would like to thank Alison Boyce, Melissa Lassiter, Sloane
Rampton, Denise Kartchner, Krystal Hansen, Mandee Lue Chatterton,
Louis Wagner, Allison Park, Erica Greaves, Karyn Cirino, and Megan
Kimbrell for assistance conducting the studies included in this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kathleen
D. Vohs, Marketing Department, Carlson School of Management, Univer-
sity of Minnesota, Suite 3-150, 321 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN
55455. E-mail: vohsx005@umn.edu
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008, Vol. 94, No. 5, 883–898
Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 0022-3514/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.883
883

those who did buy were less satisfied with their purchase. Such
findings suggest that choice, to the extent that it requires greater
decision making among options, can become burdensome and
ultimately counterproductive. Although we do not argue that hav-
ing no choice is good, recent commentaries have denounced the
notion of ever-increasing choice, using words like “relentless” and
“inescapable” (Mick, 2005) to describe this “tyranny of freedom”
(Schwartz, 2000, p. 79).
The present investigation was designed to offer a possible
explanation for the detrimental effects of choosing. Our approach
was based on recent evidence that the self’s executive function
relies on a limited resource that resembles a form of strength or
energy. Past work has mainly established that this resource is
depleted in acts of self-regulation (Baumeister, 2002; Muraven,
Tice, & Baumeister, 1998; Vohs & Heatherton, 2000), but it may
also be used in other executive activities of the self, most notably
in making choices. We hypothesized that this resource is the same
as that used for self-regulation. As a result, one repercussion of
making choices could be a subsequent reduction in effective self-
regulation due to a lack of resources to put toward subsequent
tasks and challenges.
Choice and Control
By some analyses, human life is full of constant choices, insofar
as almost every time one acts, one could probably have done
something different (Sartre, 1956; but cf. Hofmann, Strack, &
Deutsch, in press). By that definition, the above Starbucks example
would entail that every customer makes 19,000 choices with every
order. We use the term choice in a more limited sense, however, to
refer to choices made by a conscious consideration among alter-
natives. Much of the time people proceed by routine, habit, and
automatic processes (Bargh, 2002). We consider the contemplation
of alternatives and selection among them to be a meaningful and
effortful internal act that involves more than habitual behavior.
The most advanced form of choosing involves weighing informa-
tion about currently available options so as to select the option that
seems most promising. This process would be the most flexible
and potentially the most adaptive in terms of promoting survival
and reproduction (especially in the multidimensional social envi-
ronment known as human culture), but it requires the most elab-
orate information-processing apparatus and the most pliant behav-
ior control system—which would suggest that it is a costly skill.
The cost of such choosing is our current focus.
Self-Regulatory Resource Depletion
The self’s executive function is the agent that makes decisions,
initiates and maintains action, and regulates the self by operating
on its inner states (Baumeister, 1998). We define self-regulation as
the self exerting control to override a prepotent response, with the
assumption that replacing one response with another is done to
attain goals and conform to standards. Recent findings have indi-
cated that many of the self’s activities depend on a common
resource, akin to energy or strength. This step encompasses re-
sponses designed to move the person from the current point toward
the standard (cf. operate mode in cybernetic models; Carver &
Scheier, 1990). All of these activities draw on the same resource,
which is limited and seems easily depleted.
A series of studies has provided evidence that some self-
resource is depleted by acts of self-regulation. Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Muraven, and Tice (1998) and Muraven et al. (1998)
showed that performing one act of regulating the self impaired
performance on a subsequent, seemingly unrelated act of self-
control. Presumably, the first act of self-control depleted some
common resource that would have been needed to perform better
at the second act of self-control. Depletion of the self’s resources
(also termed ego depletion) has been linked to multiple behavioral
problems, including overeating by dieters (Vohs & Heatherton,
2000), prejudicial responding (Richeson & Shelton, 2003), inef-
fective self-presentation (Vohs, Baumeister, & Ciarocco, 2005),
intellectual underachievement (Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister,
2003), inappropriate sexual responses (Gailliot & Baumeister,
2007), and impulsive overspending (Vohs & Faber, 2007).
Self-regulation and decision making may share more than sim-
ply being housed under the executive function of the self. The core
question of the present research was whether the resources that
drive self-regulation might also govern other activities of the
executive function, such as decision making (Vohs, 2006). If so,
then making choices should lead to impaired self-control after-
ward, even on tasks unrelated to making those choices.
Choice Can Impair Self-Control
There are several reasons to think that choosing would deplete
the self’s strength. These reasons also differentiate the act of
deliberation from that of choosing. Self-regulation presumably
consumes resources because the self must override one response
and then substitute a different response, and energy is needed to
perform these interrupt and initiate functions. In support of the
uniqueness of choosing, the reflective–implemental model (Strack,
Werth, & Deutsch, 2006) conceptualizes choosing as a quasi-
behavioral act that ties the selected option to the self via the
creation of a mental representation. The initiation of a mental link
between the active, intentional, reflective part of the self and the
desired option also suggests an energy-consuming act that would
deplete regulatory resources (Vohs, 2006).
Prior work has contained mixed findings about whether choos-
ing depletes resources. One study found evidence of depletion
using a dissonance paradigm, in which making a choice to perform
a counterattitudinal behavior resulted in subsequent impairment in
self-control (Baumeister et al., 1998). This finding could mean that
choosing depletes the self’s resources but may also mean that
dissonance-reduction processes were depleting. Moller, Deci, and
Ryan (2006) produced evidence that participants who freely chose
their favorite option showed no signs of depletion. They concluded
that autonomous choice is not depleting.
We readily accept that some choices are more depleting than
others. Pleasantness might well mitigate the impact of choosing,
especially if only a few choices are made. Still, we reasoned that
making a choice involves a special intrapersonal act. This step,
which commits the person to a course of action (Strack et al.,
2006), may take effort above and beyond merely thinking about
possible options. Hence choosing may consume some of the self’s
limited supply of energy, thereby rendering the resource less
available for further demands.
884 VOHS ET AL.