Open AccessRewarding cognitive effort increases the intrinsic value of mental labor
Author(s) -
Georgia Clay,
Christopher Mlynski,
Franziska M. Korb,
Thomas Goschke,
Veronika Job
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2111785119
Subject(s) - task (project management) , psychology , cognitive psychology , preference , value (mathematics) , mental effort , cognition , point (geometry) , reading (process) , exertion , social psychology , applied psychology , computer science , medicine , geometry , management , mathematics , machine learning , neuroscience , political science , law , economics , microeconomics , physical therapy
Significance Many extraordinary human skills like reading, mastering an instrument, or programming require thousands of hours of practice and continued exertion of mental effort. However, the importance of mental effort often contrasts with currently dominant theories suggesting that effort is aversive and something people avoid whenever possible. Here, we show that rewarding participants for the exertion of effort in a cognitive task increased their preference for more demanding tasks in a transfer phase. This provides evidence that people can learn to positively value effort and demanding tasks in the absence of extrinsic reward. These findings challenge currently dominant theories of mental effort and point to the role of learning environments for the development of effort-related motivation.