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Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort
Economists have known for centuries that to understand an individual's decisions, we must consider not only the objective value of the goal at stake, but its subjective value as well. However, achieving that goal ultimately requires expenditure of effort. Surprisingly, despite the ubiquitous ro...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292015/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34283943 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0387 |
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author | Summerside, Erik M. Ahmed, Alaa A. |
author_facet | Summerside, Erik M. Ahmed, Alaa A. |
author_sort | Summerside, Erik M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Economists have known for centuries that to understand an individual's decisions, we must consider not only the objective value of the goal at stake, but its subjective value as well. However, achieving that goal ultimately requires expenditure of effort. Surprisingly, despite the ubiquitous role of effort in decision-making and movement, we currently do not understand how effort is subjectively valued in daily movements. Part of the difficulty arises from the lack of an objective measure of effort. Here, we use a physiological approach to address this knowledge gap. We quantified objective effort costs by measuring metabolic cost via expired gas analysis as participants performed a reaching task against increasing resistance. We then used neuroeconomic methods to quantify each individual's subjective valuation of effort. Rather than the diminishing sensitivity observed in reward valuation, effort was valued objectively, on average. This is significantly less than the near-quadratic sensitivity to effort observed previously in force-based motor tasks. Moreover, there was significant inter-individual variability with many participants undervaluing or overvaluing effort. These findings demonstrate that in contrast with monetary decisions in which subjective value exhibits diminishing marginal returns, effort costs are valued more objectively in low-effort reaching movements common in daily life. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8292015 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82920152021-07-21 Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort Summerside, Erik M. Ahmed, Alaa A. J R Soc Interface Life Sciences–Engineering interface Economists have known for centuries that to understand an individual's decisions, we must consider not only the objective value of the goal at stake, but its subjective value as well. However, achieving that goal ultimately requires expenditure of effort. Surprisingly, despite the ubiquitous role of effort in decision-making and movement, we currently do not understand how effort is subjectively valued in daily movements. Part of the difficulty arises from the lack of an objective measure of effort. Here, we use a physiological approach to address this knowledge gap. We quantified objective effort costs by measuring metabolic cost via expired gas analysis as participants performed a reaching task against increasing resistance. We then used neuroeconomic methods to quantify each individual's subjective valuation of effort. Rather than the diminishing sensitivity observed in reward valuation, effort was valued objectively, on average. This is significantly less than the near-quadratic sensitivity to effort observed previously in force-based motor tasks. Moreover, there was significant inter-individual variability with many participants undervaluing or overvaluing effort. These findings demonstrate that in contrast with monetary decisions in which subjective value exhibits diminishing marginal returns, effort costs are valued more objectively in low-effort reaching movements common in daily life. The Royal Society 2021-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8292015/ /pubmed/34283943 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0387 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Life Sciences–Engineering interface Summerside, Erik M. Ahmed, Alaa A. Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
title | Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
title_full | Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
title_fullStr | Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
title_full_unstemmed | Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
title_short | Using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
title_sort | using metabolic energy to quantify the subjective value of physical effort |
topic | Life Sciences–Engineering interface |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292015/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34283943 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0387 |
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