Make or break: The influence of expected challenges and rewards on the motivation and experience associated with cognitive effort exertion.

ABSTRACT: Challenging goals can induce harder work but also greater stress, in turn potentially undermining goal achievement. We sought to examine how mental effort and subjective experiences thereof interact as a function of challenge level and the size of the incentives at stake. Participants performed a task that rewarded individual units of effort investment (correctly performed Stroop trials) but only if they met a threshold number of correct trials within a fixed time interval (challenge level). We varied this challenge level (Study 1, N = 40), and the rewards at stake (Study 2, N = 79), and measured variability in task performance and self-reported affect across task intervals. Greater challenge and higher rewards facilitated greater effort investment but also induced greater stress, while hi

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10723292 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature