You deplete me: Impacts of providing positive and negative event support on self control
We examined how providing social support may reduce self control. Participants who reported greater effectiveness concerns and emotion regulation while providing daily support showed greater behavioral and subjective depletion; moreover, supporting partners' negative events tended to involve greater concerns and emotion regulation than partners' positive events (Study 1) It was the act of providing support (and not just listening to events) that led to depletion (Study 2) and manipulating individuals to have greater concerns about support effectiveness caused them to show less self control (Study 3) Overall, the results suggest that support provision can reduce self control in a variety of ways (influencing persistence, focus, and feelings of exhaustion) particularly when there are concerns about effectiveness and the need to regulate emotions.