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A team at Technische Universität Dresden have run a clever study that shows that people can learn to enjoy and become more motivated to engage in cognitive effort. This goes against our view that we human beings are generally lazy, or that some of us are, or some of us are in some conditions and with some tasks.
They conducted a number of experiments in-person with 121 participants and online with a further 1’457 participants. The in-person experiments measured cardiovascular responses to the cognitive tasks the participants were engaged in. One group was rewarded according to the amount of effort they exerted as measured by their cardiovascular data. The other group was rewarded randomly. The participants could then choose to solve further maths task and those that had been rewarded for effort chose to do the more difficult tasks!
In the online version participants were rewarded for how difficult the tasks were ranked, irrespective of their performance. On choosing further tasks they also preferred the difficult tasks over the easier tasks.
A nice study that shows it is probably not effort that is guiding our laziness but chance of rewards! This could also become a self-fulfilling prophecy or a vicious circle. Take note!
