Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort.

ABSTRACT: When making decisions, humans aim to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. The exertion of mental or physical effort has been proposed to be one those costs, translating into avoidance of behaviors carrying effort demands. This motivational framework also predicts that people should experience positive affect when anticipating demand that is subsequently avoided (i.e., a "relief effect"), but evidence for this prediction is scarce. Here, we follow up on a previous study [1] that provided some initial evidence that people more positively evaluated outcomes if it meant they could avoid performing an additional demanding task. However, the results from this study did not provide conclusive evidence that this effect was driven by effort avoidance. Here, we report two experiments that are ab

SUBMITTER: Gheza D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10653461 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature