**Implementation of the official protocol** **Experimenters** The replication will be primarily conducted and supervised by Angela Birt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Mount Saint Vincent University (the Mount) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has been conducting research in the area of cognitive psychology for over 18 years. She, and a number of research assistants (RAs) in her lab, participated in both phases of the Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) RRR as well as the Hart & Albarracin (2011) RRR. Therefore, she is qualified to carry out as well as train and supervise students to assist with conducting this replication. There will be four RAs who will administer the experiment to participants; however, one will take on a larger role in executing the replication than the others (e.g., participant recruitment, scheduling participants, organizing/ scheduling other RAs, assisting with data organization and analyses, etc.). - Megan Muise is an undergraduate psychology student at the Mount, and has been/ will be trained on all aspects of the official protocol (i.e., **Protocol-49TQVF**) by Dr. Birt through a Directed Studies in Psychology course. As a RA in Dr. Birt’s lab, Ms. Muise has experience with research methodology, ethics applications, building experiments with specialized software (e.g., SuperLab, installing E-Prime scripts), administering experiments to participants individually and in small groups, data management/ organization, and various statistical analyses. She is familiar with the Hart & Albarracin (2011) RRR as she ran participants through the experiment, and has worked on several other experiments within Dr. Birt’s lab. Her participation in this RRR will be a valuable opportunity to work closely with Dr. Birt and increase her knowledge and experience in carrying out scientific research. Ms. Muise is familiar with the Sripada, Kessler, and Jonides (2014) original study, with related published research on ego-deletion, and with the three versions of the official replication protocol. She has set up all components of the experiment and updated the components according to the latest revisions (i.e., they are ready for administration to participants), assisted with writing the University Review Board Ethics Application, and will have practiced administering the experiment and assist Dr. Birt with training the other RAs to administer it before the actual data collection begins. Dr. Birt will work closely with Ms. Muise and the other RAs throughout the entire process. She will directly oversee all their work to ensure proper procedures are being followed, and, once data collection begins, will check in with them on a regular basis in order to follow the progress of the experiment and assist with any issues that may arise. **Piloting / training** All four RAs, including Ms. Muise, will practice administering the experiment to at least 5 pilot participants. Ms. Muise has already practiced running the experiment with Dr. Birt and one other RA in the lab and will practice with at least three other pilot participants. She is aware of the latest changes and will practice the final version of the experiment on at least 5 pilot participants before data collection begins. Similarly, the other RAs will have practiced running the experiment on at least 5 pilot participants until they feel comfortable and confident administering the experiment. Ms. Muise and Dr. Birt will ensure they are running the experiment properly before official data collection begins. Data from all pilot participants will be discarded. **Experimenter knowledge of expected outcomes** A total of four RAs will be the experimenters. Due to the fact that Ms. Muise is taking a large role in executing this RRR, she has considerable knowledge of ego depletion and the details of this replication. However, the other three experimenters do not. Ms. Muise’s assistance with running participants is essential in order to collect the data in a timely manner. Thus, in order to test for potential demand characteristics a posteriori, each RA will be assigned a number from 1 to 4, a record will be kept as to which experimenter ran which participants and this information will be included in the Excel data file that will be uploaded to our lab’s OSF page. If it becomes obvious, at any point during the data collection process, that any of the RAs (other than Ms. Muise) have discovered or guessed the hypothesis of the study, it will be noted in the lab log. At the end of data collection Dr. Birt will ask each of the experimenters individually the following questions: (1) “What do you think the overall purpose of this study was?” (2) “Do you have any idea of what the results might be?” and, if relevant, (3) “When did you start to suspect the purpose and the anticipated results?” If their answers reflect they knew at the very least the main hypothesis of the study, it will be recorded in the lab log. The information regarding whether a specific experimenter knew about the hypothesis and which experimenter knew will be recorded and included in the Excel data file that will be uploaded to our lab’s OSF page. At the end of the data collection, all experimenters will be debriefed about the purpose of the study and the two hypotheses. **Recruiting** Participants will be recruited from undergraduate courses at the Mount. Course instructors teaching undergraduate courses during the winter 2015 (and potentially the spring 2015) academic term will be sent an email requesting permission to recruit students from their course(s). Following the replication Protocol-49TQVF, participants will be invited to participate in an experiment on “Word and Number Recognition and Reaction Time.” The true purpose of the experiment will not be revealed to participants during recruitment. Participants will be given the option receive bonus/ research participation points (dependent upon individual instructor’s permission and specification) in exchange for their participation in the experiment. **Sample, subjects, and randomization** Given the male-to-female student population of the Mount (as of 2012, 74% of undergraduates were female), it is likely that our sample will include more females than males. Additionally, according to 2012 data, 78% of the student population at the Mount were between the ages of 17-34. Therefore, it will not be difficult to ensure that participants are between 30-70% female and between 18 and 30 years of age. Finally, most students’ native speaking language is English, and so there will be no problem recruiting a sufficient number of participants whose native language is English. On the basis of the ethical principle of inclusion, individuals will NOT be excluded from participating in the experiment due sex, age, or native language. However, given the visual nature of the tasks, the recruitment information will include a statement to the effect that participants must have normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. Therefore, in order to reach the minimum of 50 participants per condition, all of whom meet the prescribed sample demographics and accounting for all exclusionary criteria, it is anticipated that the experiment will be administered to AT LEAST 110 participants. Following the official protocol-49TQVF and “**Step_by_step_RS232**” procedure, information concerning participants’ age, gender, and native language will be collected by the experimenter (i.e., he/she will ask the questions verbally and record the responses). *However, upon the recommendation of the university REB, this information will be collected **AFTER** participants have given their informed consent to participate* (rather than prior to informed consent as indicated in the official Protocol-49TQVF). The format of the questions will be as follows: - What is your age? (in years) - What is your gender? (male/ female) - What is your native language (e.g., English, French, Arabic, Chinese, etc.)? ALL data collected will be included in the data set posted to our lab’s OSF page. However, the data of the individuals who do not meet the sample specifications and/or meet the specified exclusionary criteria will be marked as “to-be-excluded” in the data set and will not be included in the files associated with the data analyses or the data analyses prescribed by the editors. Participants will be assigned to conditions via pseudo-random assignment. Before data collection begins, a list of condition assignments (n = 50 for each of the two conditions within the list) will be constructed. The order of the list will then be generated pseudo-randomly with a computerized random number generator so that participants will be administered either the “Ego-depletion” or “No-depletion” condition in a pre-determined order, but in a manner that results in an equal number of participants in each of the two conditions. No mention of differing conditions will be made to participants, and to reduce the potential for demand characteristics, experimenters will be given the list of pre-determined condition assignments with "A" (for the no-depletion) and "B" (for the Ego-depletion condition). Two different versions of the “Step_by_step_RS232” will be created—one with the label A (i.e., no-depletion) and one with the label B (i.e., Ego-depletion). If, due to the specified exclusionary criteria, data need to be collected on additional participants in order to reach the minimum number of participants per condition, data will be collected from additional blocks of 10 participants (with 5 assigned to each condition and order randomized) until both conditions meet the minimum required sample size. Note that once we have collected data on at least 50 participants meeting ALL the inclusionary criteria for each condition, the data collection for the condition will cease. In order to prevent participants from sharing information about the study (specifically the anticipated results) with other potential participants debriefing will not occur with individual participants. Participants will asked if they wish for an explanation of the study and/ or the overall results of the study once it is complete. If they do, they will provide their email address to the experimenter which will be recorded on a sheet of paper that cannot be associated with their data in any way. The debriefing sheet will be emailed to participants once data collection is complete, and a brief summary of the overall results will be emailed once analyzed and written up. **Setting/Lab/Equipment** All participants will be tested individually (i.e., in isolation in separate rooms) sitting at a desk with a standard desktop computer. The computer specs are as follows: Operating System name: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional N System model: HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF System type: x64-based PC Processor: Intel Core i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20 GHz Installed memory: 8.00 GB of installed memory (RAM) System type: 64-bit Operating System Hewlett-Packard L01 v02.21 Monitor Type: Dell flat model monitor 2009wT Size: 20" Maximum resolution: 1680 x 1050 With respect to software, E-Prime 2.0 Run Time software along with the scripts provided will be used. They have been tested on the laboratory computers specified above and are in good working order. The Informed Consent, and the brief measures of task effort, difficulty, fatigue, and frustration will be administered in hard copy/ paper-and-pencil format. The scripts for preparing the data and computing the reaction time variability variables for analysis will be run using R statistical software. The study will be conducted in four separate rooms within the Psychology Lab at the Mount. In one room, there are 4 individual cubicles, each with a computer. In the second room, there are two computers on individual desks, and the third and fourth rooms house one computer on a desk each. Although two of the rooms have multiple computers, participants will be tested individually (i.e., alone) in the room to which they are assigned. Given that the rooms are within a single laboratory and within relative close proximity to one another, and even though the lab is a quiet space when experiments are progress, the experimenters and participants will be instructed to speak quietly. Note that experimenters will run one participant at a time, but it may be the case that a single experimenter will run two participants (maximum) simultaneously if their starting times are staggered by 15 minutes. When the experimenters are not interacting with their respective participant, they will be seated in a chair just outside the door of the room in which the participant is completing the experiment. ***NOTE*** that the experimenters will follow the Protocol-49TQVF’s “Step_by_step_RS232,” procedure but will instruct participants to open the door of the lab room (instead of ringing a bell) to let the experimenter know they have completed each relevant task.