Stanford Report has a university public press release about a recent paper [subscription required] in Psychological Science. The paper is available for free from a website of one of the authors.
The gist is that they find evidence against the (currently fashionable) hypothesis that willpower is an expendable resource. Here is the leader:
Veronika Job, Carol S. Dweck, and Gregory M. Walton
Stanford University
Abstract:Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion. We propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a person’s belief about whether willpower is a limited resource. Study 1 found that individual differences in lay theories about willpower moderate ego-depletion effects: People who viewed the capacity for self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting experience. Study 2 replicated the effect, manipulating lay theories about willpower. Study 3 addressed questions about the mechanism underlying the effect. Study 4, a longitudinal field study, found that theories about willpower predict change in eating behavior, procrastination, and self-regulated goal striving in depleting circumstances. Taken together, the findings suggest that reduced self-control after a depleting task or during demanding periods may reflect people’s beliefs about the availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion.
(HT: Brashman, as posted on HackerNews.)
Utility theory is a normative theory of rationality; it's not taken seriously as a descriptive theory anymore. Rationality is about how we should behave, not how we do.
This is a common confusion about the what dynamic inconsistency really means, although I'm now noticing that Wikipedia doesn't explain it so clearly, so I should give an example:
Monday self says: I should clean my room on Thursday, even if it will be extremely annoying to do so (within the usual range of how annoying the task can be), because of the real-world benefits of being able to have guests over on the weekend.
Thursday-self says: Oh, but now that it's Thursday and I'm annoyed, I don't think it's worth it anymore.
This is a disagreement between what your Monday-self and your Thursday-self think you should do on Thursday. It's a straight-up contradiction of preferences among outcomes. There's no need to think about utility theory at all, although preferences among outcomes, and not items is exactly what it's designed to normatively govern.
ETA: The OP now links to a lesswrongwiki article on dynamic inconsistency.