More Effort, Less Fatigue: The Role of Interest in Increasing Effort and Reducing Mental Fatigue.

Marina Milyavskaya,Angela L Duckworth,Michael Inzlicht,Brian M Galla

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.755858

Abstract

People generally prefer easier over more difficult mental tasks. Using two different adaptations of a demand selection task, we show that interest can influence this effect, such that participants choose options with a higher cognitive workload. Interest was also associated with lower feelings of fatigue. In two studies, participants (N = 63 and N = 158) repeatedly made a choice between completing a difficult or easy math problem. Results show that liking math predicts choosing more difficult (vs. easy) math problems (even after controlling for perceived math skill). Two additional studies used the Academic Diligence Task (Galla et al., 2014), where high school students (N = 447 and N = 884) could toggle between a math task and playing a video game/watching videos. In these studies, we again find that math interest relates to greater proportion of time spent on the math problems. Three of these four studies also examined perceived fatigue, finding that interest relates to lower fatigue. An internal meta-analysis of the four studies finds a small but robust effect of interest on both the willingness to exert greater effort and the experience of less fatigue (despite engaging in more effort).

Highlights

People go through their lives making choices both large and small
We investigate whether interest and self-efficacy relate to the phenomenology of effort
We propose that defining something as effortful “cognitive work” has less to do with objective criteria and more to do with the appraisal of the task in terms of personal interest

Summary

Introduction

People go through their lives making choices both large and small Many of these choices involve the decision to expend or conserve effort: Do I pack a lunch or buy one? People prefer to conserve effort and take the easier route (Hull, 1943; Kool et al, 2010). They sometimes choose to engage in more effortful activities: Sudoku instead of TV, more difficult courses instead of “easy As,” and cognitively demanding video games. We wonder if feelings of effort are not merely related to how demanding or difficult a task is, and the product of how interested and efficacious a person feels while performing the task

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