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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Effort heuristic | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effort_heuristic | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:57:34.737352+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Explanations == Human behavior, like that of most other animals, is often driven by rewards and directed by the energetic cost of an action. It takes effort to attain rewards, and people accordingly weigh the value of rewards against the amount of effort that is required to attain them. At an early age, children learn that good performance due to high effort is valued by adults and that teachers are most likely to reward those who work hard. With experience, they internalize effort as a valuable commodity.
== Alternative theories == Research directly examining and testing the effort heuristic is scarce, however there are other research areas that incorporated this construct and, in some way, manipulated its effects. However, a key distinction between the study done by Kruger et al. and other research on the role of effort on judgment is that the former focused on other-generated effort rather than self-generated effort.
=== Cognitive dissonance ===
==== Effort justification ==== Over half a century ago, social psychologist Leon Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. It asserts that inconsistencies among a person's beliefs, attitudes, or opinions produce psychological discomfort, leading people to rationalize their behavior or change their attitudes. One concept that stemmed from the dissonance theory is that of effort justification in which the subjective value of an outcome is directly related to the effort that went into obtaining it. When people suffer, work hard or make sacrifices, they will attempt to convince themselves that it is worthwhile. People tend to put the most value on goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve. This is probably because cognitive dissonance would arise if great effort is made to achieve something that is subsequently evaluated negatively.
==== Aronson and Mills (1959) ==== Aronson and Mills conducted a study where college students underwent a "severe" or a "mild" initiation to join a discussion group. Subjects in the severe initiation group were required to read a sexually explicit passage out loud in front of the experimenter, whereas those in the mild initiation group read a less embarrassing passage. When subjects were asked to evaluate the discussion group, those in the severe initiation condition rated it higher than those in the mild initiation group. Aronson and Mills interpreted their result in terms of cognitive dissonance. According to Aronson and Mills, to resolve the dissonance produced by reading the embarrassing passage, subjects in the severe initiation group gave more value to the discussion group than did subjects in the mild initiation group. The more difficult the task, the greater the value given to sources of reinforcement that followed task completion.
=== Self-perception theory === Daryl Bem (1965) proposed an alternative to the cognitive dissonance theory in explaining how attitudes are shaped. The self-perception theory suggests that people infer their own attitudes, opinions, and other internal states partly by observing their behavior and the circumstances in which that behavior occurs. This pattern of thought unfolds because people are engaged in normal efforts to better understand their own behaviors. Bem suggested that all individuals analyze their own behavior as much as an outside observer might and, as a result of these observations, people make judgments about why they are motivated to do what they do. He originally believed that most findings explained by cognitive dissonance were really due to self-perception. However, studies have shown that self-perception is primarily at work when subjects do not have well-defined attitudes regarding the issue at hand.
== Applications ==
=== Goal evaluations === Research has shown that the amount of energy put towards the achievement of a goal may play a role in the development or change of an individual's attitude towards that goal. While evaluating a goal, one is motivated to place more value on a goal that has required greater effort to achieve. Axsom and Cooper (1985) suggested that if an objective or the way in which a goal is obtained is not initially attractive, an individual may later look to their own past behavior to determine their attitude towards that goal. If much effort has been spent in the attainment of a goal, it should come to be seen as worthwhile and therefore more attractive. This resembles the need to justify one's efforts in accordance with the cognitive dissonance theory but there is evidence supporting that other factors may be at play. One study proposed that the experienced goal value and consumers' subsequent motivation vary as a function of whether or not the pursuit of the goal is perceived to be one's autonomous choice. They found that when consumers perceive that the goal they pursue is adopted through an autonomous choice, the initial effort investment is experienced as reflecting the value of the goal; therefore, greater effort increased the value of the goal as well as consumers' subsequent motivation. Conversely, if consumers perceive that the goal has been imposed on them, they experience psychological reactance that is proportional to the amount of effort that they expend in pursuing the goal; thus, they devalue the goal as they invest more effort in its pursuit and show lower subsequent motivation.
=== Consumer appraisal === The study by Kruger et al. demonstrated that when evaluating an item, people have a tendency to judge objects that took a longer time to produce to be of higher value. With this knowledge, companies can manipulate the manner in which a product is viewed to make their products appear desirable to consumers. Because effort is usually required to get the best outcomes, people looking for the best outcomes presume effort must imply the best possible outcome. Briñol, Petty, and Tormala (2006) suggested that the impact of effort on evaluation depends on the meaning people are overtly directed to assign to effort. For example, if people are told that unintelligent people like ease, outcomes associated with ease are judged less favorably.
== See also == Availability heuristic Affect heuristic Labor theory of value
== References ==