People feel tired or depleted after exerting mental effort. But even preregistered studies often fail to find effects of exerting effort on behavioral performance in the laboratory or elucidate the ...underlying psychology. We tested a new paradigm in four preregistered within-subjects studies (N = 686). An initial high-demand task reliably elicited very strong effort phenomenology compared with a low-demand task. Afterward, participants completed a Stroop task. We used drift-diffusion modeling to obtain the boundary (response caution) and drift-rate (information-processing speed) parameters. Bayesian analyses indicated that the high-demand manipulation reduced boundary but not drift rate. Increased effort sensations further predicted reduced boundary. However, our demand manipulation did not affect subsequent inhibition, as assessed with traditional Stroop behavioral measures and additional diffusion-model analyses for conflict tasks. Thus, effort exertion reduced response caution rather than inhibitory control, suggesting that after exerting effort, people disengage and become uninterested in exerting further effort.
Many everyday choices are based on personal, subjective preferences. When choosing between two options, we often feel conflicted, especially when trading off costs and benefits occurring at different ...times (e.g., saving for later versus spending now). Although previous work has investigated the neurophysiological basis of conflict during inhibitory control tasks, less is known about subjective conflict resulting from competing subjective preferences. In this pre-registered study, we investigated subjective conflict during intertemporal choice, whereby participants chose between smaller immediate versus larger delayed rewards (e.g., $15 today vs. $22 in 30 days). We used economic modeling to parametrically vary eleven different levels of conflict, and recorded EEG data and pupil dilation. Midfrontal theta power, derived from EEG, correlated with pupil responses, and our results suggest that these signals track different gradations of subjective conflict. Unexpectedly, both signals were also maximally enhanced when decisions were surprisingly easy. Therefore, these signals may track events requiring increased attention and adaptive shifts in behavioral responses, with subjective conflict being only one type of such event. Our results suggest that the neural systems underlying midfrontal theta and pupil responses interact when weighing costs and benefits during intertemporal choice. Thus, understanding these interactions might elucidate how individuals resolve self-control conflicts.
•Modeled conflict during intertemporal choice and measured EEG and pupil responses.•Midfrontal theta and pupil responses parametrically tracked subjective conflict.•But theta and pupil responses were also large when decisions were surprisingly easy.•These signals may implement adaptive control during value-guided choice.
Researchers run experiments to test theories, search for and document phenomena, develop theories, or advise policymakers. When testing theories, experiments must be internally valid but do not have ...to be externally valid. However, when experiments are used to search for and document phenomena, develop theories, or advise policymakers, external validity matters. Conflating these goals and failing to recognize their tensions with validity concerns can lead to problems with theorizing. Psychological scientists should be aware of the mutual-internal-validity problem, long recognized by experimental economists. When phenomena elicited by experiments are used to develop theories that, in turn, influence the design of theory-testing experiments, experiments and theories can become wedded to each other and lose touch with reality. They capture and explain phenomena within but not beyond the laboratory. We highlight how triangulation can address validity problems by helping experiments and theories make contact with ideas from other disciplines and the real world.
Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a key brain region involved in cognitive control and decision making, is suggested to mediate effort‐ and value‐based decision making, but the specific role of ACC in ...this process remains debated. Here we used frontal midline theta (FMT) and the reward positivity (RewP) to examine ACC function in a value‐based decision making task requiring physical effort. We investigated whether (1) FMT power is sensitive to the difficulty of the decision or to selecting effortful actions, and (2) RewP is sensitive to the subjective value of reward outcomes as a function of effort investment. On each trial, participants chose to execute a low‐effort or a high‐effort behavior (that required squeezing a hand‐dynamometer) to obtain smaller or larger rewards, respectively, while their brainwaves were recorded. We replicated prior findings that tonic FMT increased over the course of the hour‐long task, which suggests increased application of control in the face of growing fatigue. RewP amplitude also increased following execution of high‐effort compared to low‐effort behavior, consistent with increased valuation of reward outcomes by ACC. Although neither phasic nor tonic FMT were associated with decision difficulty or effort selection per se, an exploratory analysis revealed that the interaction of phasic FMT and expected value of choice predicted effort choice. This interaction suggests that phasic FMT increases specifically under situations of decision difficulty when participants ultimately select a high‐effort choice. These results point to a unique role for ACC in motivating and persisting at effortful behavior when decision conflict is high.
Existing theories and evidence suggest a role of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in integrating effort costs and reward to regulate cognitive control over behavior. However, the precise mechanism is debated. Our results suggest that ACC is involved in overcoming decision conflict to motivate effortful yet rewarding behavior precisely when conflict is high. In this way ACC may be uniquely positioned to motivate and persist at especially challenging goal‐directed behaviors.
Neuroeconomics is the study of the neurobiological bases of subjective preferences and choices. We present a novel framework that synthesizes findings from the literatures on neuroeconomics and ...creativity to provide a neurobiological description of creative cognition. We propose that value-based decision-making processes and activity in the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) neuromodulatory system underlie creative cognition, as well as the large-scale brain network dynamics shown to be associated with creativity. This reconceptualization leads to several falsifiable hypotheses that can further understanding of creativity, decision making, and brain network dynamics.
People tend to avoid exerting cognitive effort, and findings from recent behavioral studies suggest that effort allocation is in part determined by the opportunity cost of slothful ...responding—operationalized as the average reward rate per unit time. When the average rate of reward is high, individuals make more errors in cognitive control tasks, presumably owing to a withdrawal of costly cognitive processing. An open question remains whether the presumed modulations of cognitively effortful control processes are observable at the neural level. Here, we measured EEG while participants completed the Simon task, a well-known response conflict task, while the experienced average reward rate fluctuated across trials. We examined neural activity associated with the opportunity cost of time by applying generalized eigendecomposition, a hypothesis-driven source separation technique, to identify a midfrontal component associated with the average reward rate. Fluctuations in average reward rate modulated not only component amplitude but also, most importantly, component theta power (4–8 Hz). Higher average reward rate was associated with reduced theta power, suggesting that the opportunity of time modulates effort allocation. These neural results provide evidence for the idea that people strategically modulate the amount of cognitive effort they exert based on the opportunity cost of time.
Effort is aversive and often avoided, even when earning benefits for oneself. Yet, people sometimes work hard for others. How do people decide who is worth their effort? Prior work shows people avoid ...physical effort for strangers relative to themselves, but invest more physical effort for charity. Here, we find that people avoid cognitive effort for others relative to themselves, even when the cause is a personally meaningful charity. In two studies, participants repeatedly decided whether to invest cognitive effort to gain financial rewards for themselves and others. In Study 1, participants (N = 51; 150 choices) were less willing to invest cognitive effort for a charity than themselves. In Study 2, participants (N = 47; 225 choices) were more willing to work cognitively for a charity than an intragroup stranger, but again preferred cognitive exertion that benefited themselves. Computational modeling suggests that, unlike prior physical effort findings, cognitive effort discounted the subjective value of rewards linearly. Exploratory machine learning analyses suggest that people who represented others more similarly to themselves were more willing to invest effort on their behalf, opening up new avenues for future research.
Recent experiments have found that prompting people to think about accuracy reduces misinformation sharing intentions. The process by which this effect operates, however, remains unclear. Do accuracy ...prompts cause people to “stop and think,” increasing deliberation? Or do they change what people think about, drawing attention to accuracy? Since these two accounts predict the same behavioral outcomes (i.e., increased sharing discernment following a prompt), we used computational modeling of sharing decisions with response time data, as well as out-of-sample ratings of headline perceived accuracy, to test the accounts' divergent predictions across six studies (N = 5633). The results suggest that accuracy prompts do not increase the amount of deliberation people engage in. Instead, they increase the weight participants put on accuracy while deliberating. By showing that prompting people makes them think better even without thinking more, our results challenge common dual-process interpretations of the accuracy-prompt effect. Our findings also highlight the importance of understanding how social media distracts people from considering accuracy, and provide evidence for scalable interventions that redirect people's attention.
Recent work suggests that personality moderates the relationship between political ideology and the sharing of misinformation. Specifically, Lawson and Kakkar (2022) claimed that fake news sharing ...was driven mostly by low conscientiousness conservatives. We reanalyzed their data and conducted five new preregistered conceptual replications to reexamine their claims (N = 2,433; stopping rule determined via Bayesian sequential sampling). The results did not support their claim that conscientious conservatives shared less fake news; instead, their findings pertain to overall sharing rates (of both true and fake news), rather than specifically to fake news. That is, the association between conscientiousness and misinformation sharing (when it occurs) is explained by lower overall sharing instead of a particular resistance to fake news per se. Our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between overall sharing tendencies and the sharing of misinformation specifically, which have different theoretical and practical implications for how to combat the spread of misinformation.
Public Significance StatementThis research challenges the claim that misinformation sharing is mostly driven by low conscientiousness conservatives. We reanalyzed existing data and conducted five conceptual replication studies, which did not find evidence for this claim and showed that low conscientiousness conservatives tend to share more news overall and not more misinformation specifically. Our results highlight the need to distinguish between overall sharing tendencies and the sharing of misinformation.
The detection of conflict between incompatible impulses, thoughts, and actions is a ubiquitous source of motivation across theories of goal-directed action. In this overview, we explore the ...hypothesis that conflict is emotive, integrating perspectives from affective science and cognitive neuroscience. Initially, we review evidence suggesting that the mental and biological processes that monitor for information processing conflict—particularly those generated by the anterior midcingulate cortex—track the affective significance of conflict and use this signal to motivate increased control. In this sense, variation in control resembles a form of affect regulation in which control implementation counteracts the aversive experience of conflict. We also highlight emerging evidence proposing that states and dispositions associated with acceptance facilitate control by tuning individuals to the emotive nature of conflict, before proposing avenues for future research, including investigating the role of affect in reinforcement learning and decision making.
•Conflicts during cognitive control trigger observable negative affect.•The valence of conflict is tracked by the anterior midcingulate cortex.•Negative evaluations of conflict motivate increased control implementation.•Openness and acceptance can aid the adaptive use of conflict-related affect.•These ideas generate new questions for the fields of learning and decision making.
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