Meaningfulness of Effort: Deriving Purpose from Really Trying

Campbell, Aidan Vern; Chung, Joanne M.; Inzlicht, Michael

doi:10.31234/osf.io/sg3aw

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…We also explored three individual difference variables. Participants completed: The need for cognition scale (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) that measures individual differences in enjoyment of cognitive effort, the meaningfulness of effort scale (Campbell et al, 2022) that measures the degree to which people find pushing themselves to be meaningful, and the boredom proneness scale (Struk et al, 2017) that measures propensity to feel bored. In Studies 10–12, participants also completed the social desirability scale (He et al, 2015) that measures the tendency to respond in ways that are viewed as favorable by other people.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do humans prefer cognitive effort over doing nothing?

Wu¹,

Ferguson²,

Inzlicht³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Humans and other animals find mental (and physical) effort aversive and have the fundamental drive to avoid it. However, doing nothing is also aversive. Here, we ask whether people choose to avoid effort when the alternative is to do nothing at all. Across 12 studies, participants completed variants of the demand selection task, in which they repeatedly selected between a cognitively effortful task (e.g., simple addition, Stroop task, and symbol-counting task) and a task that required no effort (e.g., doing nothing, watching the computer complete the Stroop, and symbol-viewing). We then tabulated people's choices. Across our studies and an internal meta-analysis, we found little evidence that people choose to avoid effort (and hints that people sometimes prefer effort) when the alternative was doing nothing. Our findings suggest that doing nothing can be just as costly-if not more costly-than exerting effort.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do humans prefer cognitive effort over doing nothing?

Wu¹,

Ferguson²,

Inzlicht³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…For example, young children may be unmotivated to perform well in the lab and in the classroom because they do not trust that their efforts will pay off or they do not see the activities as relevant to their lives (Matthews, 2018;Michaelson & Munakata, 2021). Children, like adults, may not find the effort required to perform well on assessments of executive function meaningful (Campbell et al, 2022). An extension of this interpretation is that relationships between executive function task performance and academic achievement are partially driven by a willingness to engage executive functions, rather than executive function capacities directly.…”

Section: Reinforcing Executive Function Engagement Within Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Doesn’t Executive Function Training Improve Academic Achievement? Rethinking Individual Differences, Relevance, and Engagement from a Contextual Framework

Niebaum

Munakata

2022

Journal of Cognition and Development

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Performance on lab assessments of executive functions predicts academic achievement and other positive life outcomes. A primary goal of research on executive functions has been to design interventions that improve outcomes like academic achievement by improving executive functions. These interventions typically involve extensive practice on abstract lab-based tasks and lead to improvements on these practiced tasks. However, interventions rarely improve performance on non-practiced tasks and rarely benefit outcomes like academic achievement. Contemporary frameworks of executive function development suggest that executive functions develop and are engaged within personal, social, historical, and cultural contexts. Abstract lab-based tasks do not well-capture the real-world contexts that require executive functions and should not be expected to provide generalized benefits outside of the lab. We propose a perspective for understanding individual differences in performance on executive function assessments that focuses on contextual influences on executive functions. We extend this contextual approach to training executive function engagement, rather than training executive functions directly. First, interventions should incorporate task content that is contextually relevant to the targeted outcome. Second, interventions should encourage engaging executive functions through reinforcement and contextual relevance, which may better translate to real-world outcomes than training executive functions directly. While such individualized executive functions interventions do not address systemic factors that greatly impact outcomes like academic achievement, given the extensive resources devoted to improving executive functions, we hypothesize that interventions designed to encourage children's engagement of executive functions hold more promise for impacting real-world outcomes than interventions designed to improve executive function capacities.

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“…In another series of lab studies, people reported that symbol-counting and Stroop color-naming were both more effortful and meaningful than passively watching the same symbols or Stroop color-words [3]. What is more, the more effort they applied, the more meaning they derived [9]. Again, there is nothing inherently meaningful about counting symbols or naming colors.…”

Section: Beyond "Because It's There"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Again, there is nothing inherently meaningful about counting symbols or naming colors. Yet, the more people pushed themselves, the more meaning they derived from these mundane task [9].…”

Section: Beyond "Because It's There"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further, not everyone will derive meaning from effort. People who report being high in the Meaningfulness of Effort scale derive more meaning from pushing themselves than others [9]. And these people benefit by not only being happier, but by having more satisfying jobs, higher income, and by suffering from less burnout [9].…”

Section: Why Is Effort Meaningful and For Whom?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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