Cognitive capacity limitations and Need for Cognition differentially predict reward-induced cognitive effort expenditure

The opportunity cost of time modulates cognitive effort

“…Intriguingly, these modulations in effort expenditure depended in part on how costly taskswitches are for an individual: when these cognitive costs loomed larger, individuals made larger opportunity-cost induced adjustments to effort allocation. This result dovetails well with the observation that individuals with fewer central executive resources avoid cognitive effort outlay compared to individuals with greater central executive function capacities (Kool et al, 2010;Otto, Skatova, Madlon-Kay, & Daw, 2015) and are more sensitive to shifts in benefits of effort expenditure (Sandra & Otto, 2018). Interestingly, as the changes in accuracy observed here conferred no benefit in response speed, our result suggests that these effort investment modulations were be reflexive or Pavlovian in nature rather than the result of rational costbenefit analyses Shenhav et al, 2017).…”

Motivation and cognitive control in depression

“…However, this effect is very small in comparison to the reward studies. One potential reason for the small magnitude of the effect is that there are large individual differences in the willingness to exert cognitive effort, which are known to interact with cognitive processes (Sandra & Otto, 2018). These differences could be larger than the differences in the willingness to modulate behavior to obtain rewards, which could be a more universally spread trait.…”

“…In order to control for the potential effects of the affinity towards exerting cognitive effort (Sandra & Otto, 2018), we also collected the questionnaire measure of the need for cognition (NFC), which can be regarded as the intrinsic motivation to exert cognitive effort (The Need for Cognition Scale . Participants filled in the electronic version of this scale upon completing the experiment.…”

“…Finally, we included a measure of the willingness to exert cognitive effort in order to investigate the potential interaction between the use of the cues and this individual difference. It has been shown that individuals who are less intrinsically motivated to exert cognitive effort tend to exert more effort when they are motivated by external rewards (Sandra & Otto, 2018). Thus we wanted to explore potential similarities between reward and difficulty cuing manipulations.…”

The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued

“…This variation in need for cognition , a trait that can be reliably measured and that is stable over time, describes people’s intrinsic tendencies to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities for their own sake [26,99]. Those high in need for cognition assign higher value to mental effort, require fewer incentives to engage it, and actually seek it out rather than avoid it [25,61,100]. While it is unclear what determines this variation, plausible contributors include differences in personal learning histo-ries, tolerance of frustration, and connection to cultures that expressly place value on hard work (e.g., Protestant work ethic) [26,28,70,97,101].…”