Abstract
It has been proposed that one reason physical effort is perceived as costly is because of the self-control demands that are necessary to persist in a physically demanding task. The application of control has been conceptualized as a value-based decision, that hinges on an optimization of the costs of control and available reward. Here, we drew on labor supply theory to investigate the effects of an Income Compensated Wage Decrease (ICWD) on persistence in a strenuous physical task. Research has shown that an ICWD reduced the amount of self-control participants are willing to apply, and we expected this to translate to a performance decrement in a strenuous physical task. Contrary to our expectations, participants in the ICWD group outperformed the control group in terms of persistence, without incurring higher levels of muscle fatigue or ratings of perceived exertion. Improved performance was accompanied by increases in task efficiency and a lesser increase in oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex, an area of relevance for the application of self-control. These results suggest that the relationship between the regulation of physical effort and self-control is less straightforward than initially assumed: less top-down self-control might allow for more efficient execution of motor tasks, thereby allowing for improved performance. Moreover, these findings indicate that psychological manipulations can affect physical performance, not by modulating how much one is willing to deplete limited physical resources, but by altering how tasks are executed.
Highlights
Many situations require the capability to sustain physical effort for prolonged durations.Most prototypically, this is required in the context of physical exercise.A large body of research has been targeted towards understanding the limits to human endurance performance
The Three way ANOVAs showed no difference between groups or sessions in maximal voluntary contractions (MVC), voluntary activation (VA) or the potentiated twitch at rest (Ptw)
With linear mixed-effects models (LMM), we observed no difference between groups and across the task for each experimental session in vastus lateralis (VL) electromyogram (EMG), normalized to Mmax
Summary
Many situations require the capability to sustain physical effort for prolonged durations.Most prototypically, this is required in the context of physical exercise (e.g., running, cycling).A large body of research has been targeted towards understanding the limits to human endurance performance. Most of this research centers around the idea that a strenuous physical task is terminated because physiological limits have been reached (e.g., [1,2,3,4]) This assumption has been challenged by the idea that physical performance is limited by the perception of the effort a task induces and not by the limits of the physiological system [5,6,7,8]. This implies that psychological factors are important regulators of how long physical effort can be sustained. This ascribes a key role to the psychological concept of self-control in the effective regulation of physical performance
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