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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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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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Effortfulness of visual working memory: Gauged by physical exertion.
Xie, W., & Zhang, W. (2023) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/xge0001391 · Cited by 21
Devine, S., Vassena, E., & Otto, A. R. (2023) · Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-023-01095-3 · Cited by 21
“…intrinsically costly, such that it discourages pursuing effort-ful courses of action (Kool et al., 2010; Kurzban et al., 2013; Otto and Daw, 2019; Vogel et al., 2020), whereas rewards counteract this default tendency and mobilize effortful processing (Kool and Botvinick, 2018; Silver et al., 2021).”
BackgroundInfluentialReduction of Pain and Spinal Nociceptive Transmission by Working Memory is Load Dependant
Deldar, Z., Blanchette, I., & Piché, M. (2021) · Journal of Pain · doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2021.02.001 · Cited by 16
Complexity and Procedural Choice
Banovetz, J., & Oprea, R. D. (2023) · American Economic Journal Microeconomics · doi:10.1257/mic.20210032 · Cited by 19
Trying Harder: How Cognitive Effort Sculpts Neural Representations during Working Memory
Master, S. L., Li, S., & Curtis, C. E. (2024) · Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0060-24.2024 · Cited by 21
“The exertion of cognitive e ff ort is one possible mechanism by which motivation improves cognitive performance (Shenhav et al., 2013; Westbrook and Braver, 2015; Kool and Botvinick, 2018).”
Time Spent Thinking in Online Chess Reflects the Value of Computation
Russek, E. M., Acosta‐Kane, D., van Opheusden, B., Mattar, M. G., & Griffiths, T. L. (2025) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/cogs.70119 · Cited by 19
“…been developed that treat mental effort, self-control, and model-based planning as the result of cost − benefit decisions about how to spend limited cognitive resources (Boureau et al., 2015; Keramati, Dezfouli, & Piray, 2011; Kool et al., 2017; Kool & Botvinick, 2018; Shenhav et al., 2013, 2017).”
Is cognitive conflict really effortful? Conflict priming and shielding effects on cardiac response
Bouzidi, Y. S., & Gendolla, G. H. E. (2022) · Psychophysiology · doi:10.1111/psyp.14169 · Cited by 24
“…conflict, effort, pre-ejection period posited that cognitive conflict is effortful (e.g., Dignath et al., 2020; Dreisbach & Fischer, 2012a; Inzlicht et al., 2015; Kool et al., 2013; Kool & Botvinick, 2018; van Steenbergen, 2015), but surprisingly there is little empirical support for this idea.”
BackgroundRisk and Exposure of XAI in Persuasion and Argumentation: The case of Manipulation
Carli, R., Najjar, A., & Calvaresi, D. (2022) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-15565-9_13 · Cited by 18
Don’t be Lazy! Effort as a Pivotal Element for Present and Future Well-being
Sherman, A., & Shavit, T. (2023) · Journal of Happiness Studies · doi:10.1007/s10902-023-00694-8 · Cited by 16
“Kool and Botvinick (2018) review psychological literature, in which mental effort does not contribute positively to individual welfare.”
Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort
Gheza, D., Kool, W., & Pourtois, G. (2023) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0287954 · Cited by 22
“Exerting cognitive effort carries a cost [50].”
Self-citationReward modulates cortical representations of action
Adkins, T. J., & Lee, T. G. (2020) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117708 · Cited by 17
Mikuš, N., Korb, S., Massaccesi, C., Gausterer, C., Graf, I., Willeit, M., Eisenegger, C., Lamm, C., Silani, G., & Mathys, C. D. (2022) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.79661 · Cited by 14
“Everyday behaviour can therefore be thought of as constant weighing of costs and benefits of applying modelbased over model- free decisionmaking strategies (Kool et al., 2017; Daw et al., 2011; Kool and Botvinick, 2018).”
BackgroundEffort Mobilization and Healthy Aging
Hess, T. M., Freund, A. M., & Tobler, P. N. (2021) · The Journals of Gerontology Series B · doi:10.1093/geronb/gbab030 · Cited by 16
An item response theory analysis of the matrix reasoning item bank (MaRs-IB)
Zorowitz, S., Chierchia, G., Blakemore, S., & Daw, N. D. (2023) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-023-02067-8 · Cited by 19
A Rational Account of Cognitive Control Development in Childhood
Steinbeis, N. (2023) · Annual Review of Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120221-040058 · Cited by 21
Pupil Size and Eye Movements Differently Index Effort in Both Younger and Older Adults
Herrmann, B., & Ryan, J. D. (2024) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn_a_02172 · Cited by 16
“The concept of “ mental workload, ” or effort, is relevant in many neurocognitive domains (Kool & Botvinick, 2018; Hockey, 1997; Brehm & Self, 1989).”
BackgroundAffective Influences on the Intensity of Mental Effort: 25 Years of Programmatic Research
Gendolla, G. H. E. (2025) · Emotion Review · doi:10.1177/17540739241303506 · Cited by 22
“…of human action, current psychology and neuroscience see an increased interest in better understanding resource allocation — with a strong recent focus on the so-called effort-related decision making (e.g., Kool & Botvinick, 2018; Kurzban et al., 2013; Salamone et al., 2017; Shenhav et al., 2017).”
Algermissen, J., Bijleveld, E., Jostmann, N. B., & Holland, R. W. (2019) · Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-019-00727-x · Cited by 19
Bogdanov, M., LoParco, S., Otto, A. R., & Sharp, M. E. (2022) · Neurobiology of Learning and Memory · doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2022.107652 · Cited by 17
Varma, M. M., Zhen, S., & Yu, R. (2023) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120363 · Cited by 16
Mindset and effort during a self-adapted arithmetic task: Variable- and person-oriented approaches
Janssen, T. W. P., Nieuwenhuis, S., Altikulaç, S., Tuong, V. V., Meeter, M., Bonte, M. L., Jansen, B. R. J., Magis‐Weinberg, L., & van Atteveldt, N. (2022) · Learning and Motivation · doi:10.1016/j.lmot.2022.101840 · Cited by 16
A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making
Schulze, C., Aka, A., Bartels, D. M., Bucher, S., Embrey, J. R., Gureckis, T. M., Häubl, G., Ho, M. K., Krajbich, I. M., Moore, A. K., et al. (2025) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.004 · Cited by 20
“Thus, the depletion account faces serious challenges [15].”
Gershman, S. J., & Burke, T. A. (2022) · Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-022-01034-8 · Cited by 14
“More broadly, rational inattention fits with a constellation of hypotheses that suggest how mental effort can be adaptively allocated based on task demands and incentives (Shenhav et al., 2017; Kool & Botvinick, 2018).”
BackgroundLafond-Brina, G., Pham, B., & Bonnefond, A. (2023) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhad074 · Cited by 12
Metadata
- 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
- 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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