Article

Do humans prefer cognitive effort over doing nothing?

2021-11-24

Abstract excerpt

<p>Humans and other animals find mental (and physical) effort aversive and have the fundamental drive to avoid it. However, doing nothing is also aversive. Here, we ask whether people choose to avoid effort when the alternative is to do nothing at all. Across twelve studies, participants completed variants of the demand selection task, in which they repeatedly selected between a cognitively effortful task (e.g., s...

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Literature Corpus work: ed68ddcc-02ac-5c91-8038-528430398f10
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/d2gkf

Open publication

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