Effort and Learning-Related Choices: the Impact of Sympathetic Activity and Ability Beliefs

Abstract

Previous research shows that some students view their abilities as malleable with effort and aim to improve themselves (incremental beliefs), while others believe abilities are fixed and cannot change with effort and aim to prove themselves (entity beliefs). Here, we investigated how such beliefs in undergraduates (n=115) relate to their effort investment during a challenging arithmetic task, indexed by 1) whether they make low vs high effort learning-related choices (easy vs difficult problems) 2) sympathetic activity measured with impedance cardiography as physiological measure of effort. Results show that incremental theorists chose relatively higher difficulty levels compared to entity theorists. Moreover, higher effort, as indexed by higher sympathetic activity, was associated with subsequently choosing lower difficulty levels. This effect was stronger for entity theorists than incremental theorists, indicating that seemed more inclined to avoid higher sympathetic activity, in line with our finding that entity theorists reported more helplessness attributions.