Effort feels meaningful

Inzlicht, Michael; Campbell, Aidan V.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.016

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Women weighed the benefits of smaller rewards higher than men, but women may have also valued effort itself higher than men. Effort can add substantial value to both rewards and to effort itself (‘The Effort Paradox’ 11 , 23 ). We can not rule out that women in our study might have valued the rewarding experience of exerting effort higher than men, which boosted the valuation of smaller rewards.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women compared with men work harder for small rewards

Lewis

Grahlow

Kühnel

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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In cost–benefit decision-making, women and men often show different trade-offs. However, surprisingly little is known about sex differences in instrumental tasks, where physical effort is exerted to gain rewards. To this end, we tested 81 individuals (47 women) with an effort allocation task, where participants had to repeatedly press a button to collect food and money tokens. We analyzed the motivational phases of invigoration and effort maintenance with varying reward magnitude, difficulty, and reward type. Whereas women and men did not differ in invigoration, we found that women showed higher effort maintenance as well as higher subjective wanting and exertion ratings for small rewards compared with men. Notably, men increased their effort more than women for higher rewards to match women’s levels of performance. Crucially, we found no sex differences depending on reward type or difficulty, indicating that sex differences were specific to the encoding of the magnitude of benefits, not costs. To summarize, women exerted higher physical effort for small rewards, which corresponded with an elevated subjective value in women compared with men. Therefore, sex differences in perceived reward magnitude may contribute to differential behavioral preferences highlighting the potential of cost–benefit decision-making to provide insights about potential mechanisms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women compared with men work harder for small rewards

Lewis

Grahlow

Kühnel

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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“…Though many of these charitable scenarios were hypothetical, it suggests a relationship between effort (or pain) and meaning in the context of prosocial causes. It may be that this extends to effortful endeavours in general (Inzlicht & Campbell, 2022).…”

Section: Beyond Mere Valuementioning

confidence: 95%

Experimental evidence that exerting effort increases meaning

Campbell,

Wang,

Inzlicht

2024

Preprint

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Efficiency demands that we work smarter and not harder, but is this better for our wellbeing? Here, we ask if exerting effort can increase feelings of meaning and purpose. In five studies (N = 1543), we manipulated how much effort participants exerted on a task and then assessed how meaningful they found those tasks. In Studies 1 and 2, we presented hypothetical scenarios, whereby participants imagined themselves (or others) exerting more or less effort on a writing task, and then asked participants how much meaning they believed they (or others) would derive. In Studies 3 and 4, we randomly assigned participants to complete inherently meaningless tasks that were harder or easier to complete, and again asked them how meaningful they found the tasks. In Study 5, we randomly assigned participants to complete a brief writing assignment with or without the help of ChatGPT, thereby making the task less or more effortful, and again asked participants how meaningful they found the assignment. In all studies, the more effort participants exerted (or imagined exerting), the more meaning they derived (or imagined deriving). These studies suggest a causal link, whereby effort begets feelings of meaning. They also suggest that part of the reason this link exists is that effort begets feeling of competence and mastery, although the evidence is preliminary and inconsistent. Effort, beyond being a mere cost, is a source of personal meaning and value, fundamentally influencing how individuals and observers perceive and derive satisfaction from tasks.

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“…In addition to building unbiased and culturally aware AI systems [92], customization could help promote user agency and correct these shortcomings [74,134]. However, customization can lead to more cognitive effort, so future AI counterspeech tools should consider effort-agency tradeoffs and explore distinctions between meaningful and non-meaningful effort [69].…”

Section: Cultivating Moral Agency and Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counterspeakers’ Perspectives: Unveiling Barriers and AI Needs in the Fight against Online Hate

Mun,

Buerger,

Liang

et al. 2024

Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Counterspeech, i.e., direct responses against hate speech, has become an important tool to address the increasing amount of hate online while avoiding censorship. Although AI has been proposed to help scale up counterspeech efforts, this raises questions of how exactly AI could assist in this process, since counterspeech is a deeply empathetic and agentic process for those involved. In this work, we aim to answer this question, by conducting in-depth interviews with 10 extensively experienced counterspeakers and a large scale public survey with 342 everyday social media users. In participant responses, we identified four main types of barriers and AI needs related to resources, training, impact, and personal harms. However, our results also revealed overarching concerns of authenticity, agency, and functionality in using AI tools for counterspeech. To conclude, we discuss considerations for designing AI assistants that lower counterspeaking barriers without jeopardizing its meaning and purpose. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.

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Effort feels meaningful

Cited by 14 publications

References 10 publications

Women compared with men work harder for small rewards

Women compared with men work harder for small rewards

Experimental evidence that exerting effort increases meaning

Counterspeakers’ Perspectives: Unveiling Barriers and AI Needs in the Fight against Online Hate

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