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Cited by 291Decision-Making and Behavioral EconomicsNeural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesBehavioral Health and Interventions

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 86 of the 86 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Mental labour

Kool, Wouter, Botvinick, Matthew·2018·Nature Human Behaviour
DOI 10.1038/s41562-018-0401-9
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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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Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 10

  1. Hull, C. L. Principles of Behavior (Appleton-Century, New York, NY, 1943).
  2. Allport, G. W. The Nature of Prejudice (Addison Wesley, New York, NY, 1954).
  3. Baroody, A. J. & Ginsburg, H. P. in Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge: The Case of Mathematics (ed. Hiebert, J.) 75–112 (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, 1986).
  4. Payne, J. W., Bettman, J. R. & Johnson, E. J. Adaptive strategy selection in decision making. J. Exp. Psychol. 14, 534–552 (1988).
  5. Apps, M. A., Grima, L. L., Manohar, S. & Husain, M. The role of cognitive effort in subjective reward devaluation and risky decision-making. Sci. Rep. 5, 16880 (2015).
  6. Posner, M. I. & DiGirolamo, G. J. in The Attentive Brain (ed. Parasuraman, R.) 401–423 (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998).
  7. Kahneman, D. Attention and Effort (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1973).
  8. Posner, M. I. & Snyder, C. R. R. in Information Processing and Cognition: The Loyola Symposium (ed. Solso, R. L.) 55–85 (Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, 1975).
  9. Musslick, S., Cohen, J. D. & Shenhav, A. Estimating the costs of cognitive control: theoretical validation and potential pitfalls. In Proc. 40th Annu. Meeting Cognitive Science Society (2017).
  10. Nicholson, W. & Snyder, C. M. Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extension (Cengage Learning, Mason, OH, 2008).

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Metadata

Authors
Kool, W., & Botvinick, M.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Google DeepMind (United Kingdom) (GB)
Corresponding author
Botvinick, Matthew
ORCID
Venue
Nature Human Behaviour
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2018-09-03
Volume
2
Issue
12
Pages
899-908
ISSN
2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41562-018-0401-9
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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