The floating duck syndrome: biased social learning leads to effort-reward imbalances.

ABSTRACT: An increasingly common phenomenon in modern work and school settings is individuals taking on too many tasks and spending effort without commensurate rewards. Such an imbalance of efforts and rewards leads to myriad negative consequences, such as burnout, anxiety and disease. Here, we develop a model to explain how such effort-reward imbalances can come about as a result of biased social learning dynamics. Our model is based on a phenomenon that on some US college campuses is called 'the floating duck syndrome'. This phrase refers to the social pressure on individuals to advertise their successes but hide the struggles and the effort put in to achieve them. We show that a bias against revealing the true effort results in social learning dynamics that lead others to underestimate the diffic

SUBMITTER: Akcay E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11362996 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature