Perceived vs. Actual Cognitive Resource Depletion: The Impact of Self-Referencing on Mental Effort

The following study examines how thinking about information about ourselves during mentally demanding tasks may affect how tired we subjectively feel compared to how mentally tired we objectively are. A phenomenon in which individuals encode information in relation to their identity, known as the self-reference effect, has been shown to greatly aid information retrieval. There is little research on whether self-referential media may reduce or amplify one’s perceived versus actual cognitive resource depletion during a task. This distinction matters because self-relevant content (such as names, targeted ads, and customized feeds) is increasingly common in digital media and may influence how people judge their own mental fatigue. With a between-subjects experimental design, this study aims to compare subjective cognitive depletion (how people feel) with objective cognitive depletion (actual performance changes) after engaging with a task embedded with self-referential or neutral content.