The feeling of effort during mental activity

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Decision science

Background:

• The subjective experience of effort influences decisions and judgments.
• The precise origins of the feeling of effort remain unclear.
• Existing research often links effort perception to physiological exertion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the proximal causes of the feeling of mental effort.
• To differentiate between subjective effort and physiological effort.
• To understand how cognitive task difficulty impacts effort perception.

Main Methods:

• Conducted two preregistered experiments involving participants performing cognitive tasks of varying difficulty.
• Measured moment-to-moment effort-related phenomenology (subjective feeling of effort).
• Monitored physiological effort indicators, specifically pupil dilation.

Main Results:

• Difficult cognitive tasks led to an increased feeling of effort.
• This increase in subjective effort was not correlated with concurrent physiological effort (pupil dilation).
• Findings suggest a dissociation between the feeling of effort and physiological exertion.

Conclusions:

• The feeling of mental effort may originate from the decision to engage physiological resources, not the exertion itself.
• This challenges the view that subjective effort is a direct readout of physiological cost.
• Highlights the role of decision-making processes in the experience of mental effort.