Evaluating Effort: Influences of Evaluation Mode on Judgments of Task‐specific Efforts

Abstract

The claim that humans adapt their actions in ways that avoid effortful processing (whether cognitive or physical) is a staple of various theories of human behavior. Although much work has been carried out focusing on the determinants of such behaviors, less attention has been given to how individuals evaluate effort. In the current set of experiments, we utilized the general evaluability theory to examine the evaluability of effort by examining subjective value functions across different evaluation modes. Individuals judged the anticipated effort of four task‐specific efforts indexed by stimulus rotation, items to be remembered, weight to be lifted, and stimulus degradation across joint (i.e., judged comparatively) and single evaluation modes (i.e., judged in isolation). General evaluability theory hypothesizes that highly evaluable attributes should be consistently evaluated (i.e., demonstrate similar subjective value functions) between the two modes. Across six experiments, we demonstrate that the perceived effort associated with items to be remembered, weight to be lifted, and stimulus degradation can be considered relatively evaluable, while the effort associated with stimulus rotation may be relatively inevaluable. Results are discussed within the context of subjective evaluation, internal reference information, and strategy selection. In addition, methodological implications of evaluation modes are considered. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Judgements of effort as a function of post-trial versus post-task elicitation

“…That is, the qualitative change between “not rotated” and “rotated” might weigh heavily when individuals are inferring effort based on beliefs and are relatively separated from the experience of processing the stimulus. The idea that, in certain situations, incremental differences are less salient than are categorical differences has been suggested previously ( Dunn et al, 2017 ; Hsee & Zhang, 2010 ). Critically, reading times reveal relatively modest effects for certain stimulus rotations (e.g., UW-UF vs. UW-RF).…”

“…The critical contribution was the discovery of a stimulus type by judgement type interaction in the context of judgements of effort, which could be interpreted as a shift in the sources of information used to inform judgements of effort as a function of judgement type. Future work aiming to illuminate the underlying factors that contribute to judgements of effort, along with focusing on the effects of various contexts (e.g., single vs. joint evaluation; Dunn et al, 2017 ) in which judgements of effort are made, will provide a deeper understanding of decisions about our expenditures of cognitive effort.…”

“…While there exists a long tradition of research investigating subjective workload ( Eggemeier & Stadler, 1984 ; Jex, 1988 ; Moray, 1982 ; Yeh & Wickens, 1988 ), the psychological basis of cognitive effort has received increased attention from researchers over the last 5 years ( Dunn et al, 2017 ; Dunn, Gaspar, & Risko, 2019 ; Dunn, Inzlicht, & Risko, 2019 ; Inzlicht et al, 2018 ; Kool & Botvinick, 2018 ; Kurzban, 2016 ; Potts et al, 2018 ; Yildirim et al, 2019 ). An important dimension of this line of research is attempting to address how individuals judge the effort anticipated or experienced on a given task or trial of a given task ( Dunn et al, 2017 ; Foo et al, 2009 ; Gweon et al, 2017 ; Marshall, 2002 ; Song & Schwarz, 2008 ; Westbrook et al, 2013 ). That is, when someone is asked how effortful they found a task to be (or will be in the case of a prospective judgement), what factors determine their judgement of effort (i.e., subjective effort)?…”

Towards a common code for difficulty: Navigating a narrow gap is like memorizing an extra digit

“…The common code hypothesis also predicts that other aspects of a task, like energy expenditure, time, utility, and consequence of mistakes, should be convertible to the perceived difficulty and hence be systematically comparable. Given that different demands have different levels of evaluability (Dunn et al, 2017), further experiments are needed to better understand how different demands are compared. We did not explore all of these potential contributors to perceived difficulty.…”

What matters in making demand-based decisions: Time alone or difficulty too?

“…However, in a single evaluation mode, some reference information is required to allow choices. Dunn et al ( 2017 ) investigated the evaluability of stimulus rotation, set size, and weight. Stimulus rotation appeared as a not evaluable feature and the authors suggested that error or failure knowledge might be required to make a feature evaluable.…”