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Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort
When making decisions, humans aim to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. The exertion of mental or physical effort has been proposed to be one those costs, translating into avoidance of behaviors carrying effort demands. This motivational framework also predicts that people should experience po...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10653461/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37972115 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287954 |
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author | Gheza, Davide Kool, Wouter Pourtois, Gilles |
author_facet | Gheza, Davide Kool, Wouter Pourtois, Gilles |
author_sort | Gheza, Davide |
collection | PubMed |
description | When making decisions, humans aim to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. The exertion of mental or physical effort has been proposed to be one those costs, translating into avoidance of behaviors carrying effort demands. This motivational framework also predicts that people should experience positive affect when anticipating demand that is subsequently avoided (i.e., a “relief effect”), but evidence for this prediction is scarce. Here, we follow up on a previous study [1] that provided some initial evidence that people more positively evaluated outcomes if it meant they could avoid performing an additional demanding task. However, the results from this study did not provide conclusive evidence that this effect was driven by effort avoidance. Here, we report two experiments that are able to do this. Participants performed a gambling task, and if they did not receive reward they would have to perform an orthogonal effort task. Prior to the gamble, a cue indicated whether this effort task would be easy or hard. We probed hedonic responses to the reward-related feedback, as well as after the subsequent effort task feedback. Participants reported lower hedonic responses for no-reward outcomes when high vs. low effort was anticipated (and later exerted). They also reported higher hedonic responses for reward outcomes when high vs. low effort was anticipated (and avoided). Importantly, this relief effect was smaller in participants with high need for cognition. These results suggest that avoidance of high effort tasks is rewarding, but that the size off this effect depends on the individual disposition to engage with and expend cognitive effort. They also raise the important question of whether this disposition alters the cost of effort per se, or rather offset this cost during cost-benefit analyses. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10653461 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106534612023-11-16 Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort Gheza, Davide Kool, Wouter Pourtois, Gilles PLoS One Research Article When making decisions, humans aim to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. The exertion of mental or physical effort has been proposed to be one those costs, translating into avoidance of behaviors carrying effort demands. This motivational framework also predicts that people should experience positive affect when anticipating demand that is subsequently avoided (i.e., a “relief effect”), but evidence for this prediction is scarce. Here, we follow up on a previous study [1] that provided some initial evidence that people more positively evaluated outcomes if it meant they could avoid performing an additional demanding task. However, the results from this study did not provide conclusive evidence that this effect was driven by effort avoidance. Here, we report two experiments that are able to do this. Participants performed a gambling task, and if they did not receive reward they would have to perform an orthogonal effort task. Prior to the gamble, a cue indicated whether this effort task would be easy or hard. We probed hedonic responses to the reward-related feedback, as well as after the subsequent effort task feedback. Participants reported lower hedonic responses for no-reward outcomes when high vs. low effort was anticipated (and later exerted). They also reported higher hedonic responses for reward outcomes when high vs. low effort was anticipated (and avoided). Importantly, this relief effect was smaller in participants with high need for cognition. These results suggest that avoidance of high effort tasks is rewarding, but that the size off this effect depends on the individual disposition to engage with and expend cognitive effort. They also raise the important question of whether this disposition alters the cost of effort per se, or rather offset this cost during cost-benefit analyses. Public Library of Science 2023-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10653461/ /pubmed/37972115 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287954 Text en © 2023 Gheza et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Gheza, Davide Kool, Wouter Pourtois, Gilles Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
title | Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
title_full | Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
title_fullStr | Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
title_full_unstemmed | Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
title_short | Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
title_sort | need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10653461/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37972115 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287954 |
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