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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gheza, Davide, Kool, Wouter, Pourtois, Gilles
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
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.
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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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