Mental labour
Abstract
Mental effort is an elementary notion in our folk psychology and a familiar fixture in everyday introspective experience. However, as an object of scientific study, mental effort has remained rather elusive. Cognitive psychology has provided some tools for understanding how effort impacts performance, by linking effort with cognitive control function. What has remained less clear are the principles that govern the allocation of mental effort. Under what circumstances do people choose to invest mental effort, and when do they decline to do so? And what regulates the intensity of mental effort when it is applied? In new and promising work, these questions are being approached with the tools of behavioural economics. Though still in its infancy, this economic approach to mental effort research has already uncovered important aspects of effort-based decision-making, and points clearly to future lines of inquiry, including some intriguing opportunities presented by recent artificial intelligence research.
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Prudence makes us do more work, which people prefer to avoid, so participants may prefer less work but with worse results.
“Our friend Prudence makes us do more work, which people prefer to avoid [19], so we may find that participants prefer less work, but with worse results Buçinca et al. [1].”
From Explainable AI is Dead, Long Live Explainable AI!: Hypothesis-driven Decision Support using Evaluative AI (2023) · cites this paper as [19]
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Brain stimulation over dorsomedial prefrontal cortex modulates effort-based decision making
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Information about task progress modulates cognitive demand avoidance
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Conscious cognitive effort in cognitive control
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Need for Cognition is associated with a preference for higher task load in effort discounting
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Is all mental effort equal? The role of cognitive demand-type on effort avoidance
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Complexity and Procedural Choice
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Don’t be Lazy! Effort as a Pivotal Element for Present and Future Well-being
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A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making
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- Authors
- Kool, W., & Botvinick, M.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Google DeepMind (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Botvinick, Matthew
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2018-09-03
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 899-908
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4249127163
- Cited by
- 288
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2026: 61 · 2025: 51 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 40 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 9 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 1.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
- Keywords
- cognitive effort, effort allocation, effort-based decision making, behavioral economics, cognitive control, cost-benefit trade-off, effort intensity, artificial intelligence
- MeSH terms
- Cognition, Decision Making, Humans, Reward, Work, Economics, Behavioral
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