Abstract: There is a growing body of research about selfcontrol induced ego depletion in recent years. The studies mainly adopted the experimental paradigm of dual unrelated selfcontrol task, which involved the inhibitory control of cognition, emotion and behavior. The results showed that selfcontrol could induce ego depletion, namely selfcontrol depletion, and after the depletion, it could be compensated. However, the problem is that, in theory and practice, selfcontrol is not equal to ego depletion. In this paper, we reviewed the research literature on ego depletion induced by selfcontrol. We suggest that, firstly, previous studies narrow the concept of selfcontrol and equated selfcontrol with inhibitory control; secondly, the ecological validity of dual unrelated selfcontrol task is not high; finally, “white bear” thoughtcontrol task does not have culture universal applicability. Therefore, the future selfcontrol study should based on the reality, and pay more attention to its positive effects.

Key words: selfcontrol; ego depletion; dualtask paradigm