Effort can have positive, negative, and nonmonotonic impacts on outcome value in economic choice

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cris.lastimport.scopus2025-08-30T03:15:31Z
dc.abstract.enEvery action demands some effort, and its level influences decision-making. Existing data suggest that in some decision contexts effort devalues outcomes, but in other contexts effort enhances outcome valuation. Here, we describe an empirical study and propose a model that incorporates negative, positive and mixed impacts of effort on outcomes in different decision contexts and in different participants. Participants chose between money and an item associated with varying levels of stair climbing effort. Some participants had previous direct experience with a real physical effort and made decisions about a physically present reward. For other participants, the effort and the associated reward was always purely hypothetical. Furthermore, the decisions were framed as prospective or retrospective – before or after effort exertion. The key behavioral finding was that in the “real” condition, greater effort decreased outcome value when considered prospectively, but increased outcome value when considered retrospectively. Interestingly, even within the same decision context, individuals showed diverse relationships between effort and outcome value. These relationships ranged from those where greater effort increased value, decreased value, to non-linear patterns, where small effort initially increased outcome value but higher effort decreased it, or the other way around (initial decrease followed by a decrease). When our model was applied to participants’ individual choices, it was able to capture the monotonic and non-monotonic relationships and outperformed previous solutions.
dc.affiliationWydział Psychologii w Warszawie
dc.affiliationInstytut Psychologii
dc.contributor.authorMarcowski, Przemysław
dc.contributor.authorBiałaszek, Wojciech
dc.contributor.authorWinkielman, Piotr
dc.date.access2025-03-20
dc.date.accessioned2025-03-20T07:51:55Z
dc.date.available2025-03-20T07:51:55Z
dc.date.created2025-01-10
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.accesstimebefore_publication
dc.description.grantnumber2018/28/T/HS6/00210
dc.description.granttitleWysiłek jako koszt i inwestycja w hipotetycznych i rzeczywistych sytuacjach wyboru
dc.description.versionfinal_author
dc.identifier.doi10.1037/xge0001738
dc.identifier.eissn1939-2222
dc.identifier.issn0096-3445
dc.identifier.urihttps://share.swps.edu.pl/handle/swps/1362
dc.languageen
dc.pbn.affiliationpsychologia
dc.rightsOther
dc.rights.questionYes_rights
dc.share.articleOPEN_REPOSITORY
dc.subject.eneffort
dc.subject.envalue
dc.subject.endecision making
dc.subject.eneffort-reward trade-off
dc.swps.sciencecloudnosend
dc.titleEffort can have positive, negative, and nonmonotonic impacts on outcome value in economic choice
dc.title.journalJournal of Experimental Psychology: General
dc.typeJournalArticle
dspace.entity.typeArticle