Brain areas associated with self-regulation don't mature until the mid-twenties. And apparently, if you compare older and younger people in a standard set-up for detecting ego-depletion, older people are not affected. WEIRD, indeed.
In 2010, there was a study indicating that ego depletion doesn't affect people who don't expect it to (and that one was run on college students). I wonder if part of the effect might be coming from differences in attitudes about effort between older and younger people.
I haven't read the article yet, but initial thought - was there any attempt to account for the possibility that older people might have been raised with different norms about willpower, so the difference is not about age but upbringing?
Age Shall Not Weary Us: Deleterious Effects of Self-Regulation Depletion Are Specific to Younger Adults
Brain areas associated with self-regulation don't mature until the mid-twenties. And apparently, if you compare older and younger people in a standard set-up for detecting ego-depletion, older people are not affected. WEIRD, indeed.
In 2010, there was a study indicating that ego depletion doesn't affect people who don't expect it to (and that one was run on college students). I wonder if part of the effect might be coming from differences in attitudes about effort between older and younger people.