Self-control failures occur because self-control draws on a limited, depletable resource
Weak-link patterns
Brief §8's named failure modes, computed from this claim's own paper roles and status -- not a single weakness score. Patterns B and E aren't implemented yet (need dependency-graph machinery, docs/BASIC_ROADMAP.md Phase 11).
stored status is 'unknown_conflicting'
Open questions
Pattern G. Human-written, never generated -- deliberately no importance or priority score (docs/BASIC_ROADMAP.md's own precedent against inventing one, matching innovation_considerations).
Does ego depletion exist as a real, smaller-than-originally-claimed effect, or was the original effect size substantially inflated by publication bias -- as the multilab preregistered replication failure suggests?
Motivated by: Pattern C (conflicting evidence, though the rule chain resolves this one via a human-judgment clause rather than a pattern count)
Evidence map
Position shows direction, circle area shows citation count. Click a paper for the reason its role was assigned.
Evidence dimensions
Eight independent 0–5 judgments, each with a written rationale. Deliberately never summed into one score.
Many small original studies, but the single largest, most rigorous test (the RRR) found null.
One of the most-replicated paradigms in social psychology - replication attempts are not scarce.
The definitive independent multi-lab test found a pooled effect near zero.
Evidence is same-paradigm replication plus meta-analytic synthesis; synthesis is not a different method of testing the claim.
Why this status
The derivation rule, evaluated top to bottom, first match wins. This is the rule itself — not a confidence score standing in for one.
This status rests on a human judgment, not the automated chain
Replaying only the machine-checkable conditions yields Preliminary, while the recorded status is Unknown — conflicting evidence. That is not a contradiction: rule 2 was specified as a judgment against a written criterion rather than a count, so a person reading the papers can reach it where this replay cannot. The stored value is authoritative; it is shown here so the difference is visible instead of implied.
- 1Unknown — unexplored
4 paper rows (needs <3) and evidence_strength=2 (needs <=1); both required
- 2Unknown — conflicting evidenceneeds human judgment
(a) 1 failure vs 0 success rows -> no; (b) 2 review rows — opposite-verdict test is a human judgment, not a count; (c) 0 conceptual failure vs 0 conceptual success, 1 original -> no
- 3Unknown — underdetermined
alternative_explanations=2 (needs <=1) AND evidence_strength=2 (needs >=3)
- 4Established
independent_replication=1 (>=4), evidence_strength=2 (>=4), consensus=2 (>=4)
Recorded rationale
v3 rule 2, clause (b): two review rows reach documented opposite verdicts - Carter & McCullough (2014, skeptical, pre-RRR) and Dang (2017, small residual effect, post-RRR). Naive citation-only guess was 'established'; divergence material. Pilot 1.