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The brain avoids difficult tasks, a tendency linked to mental health. This study found specific traits, like lack of perseverance, increase this avoidance, while others decrease it, suggesting broad psychiatric relevance.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Psychiatry
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • The law of least mental effort posits that the brain minimizes cognitive demands.
  • Previous research linked effort expenditure disruptions to specific psychiatric conditions and symptoms.
  • Transdiagnostic exploration of mental effort avoidance is lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between mental effort avoidance and a wide range of clinically-relevant symptoms and traits.
  • To examine these associations across transdiagnostic latent factors in a large sample.
  • To understand how deviations in effort expenditure relate to psychiatric constructs.

Main Methods:

  • A large sample (n=811) was surveyed.
  • Participants' avoidance of mental effort was assessed.
  • Associations between mental effort avoidance and various clinical symptoms/traits were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • Lack of perseverance (a dimension of impulsiveness) was the only construct associated with increased mental effort avoidance.
  • Positive urgency, distress intolerance, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, disordered eating, and a factor of compulsive behavior/intrusive thoughts were linked to less mental effort avoidance.
  • These findings highlight a transdiagnostic pattern of effort expenditure deviations.

Conclusions:

  • Mental effort avoidance is not confined to a single psychiatric diagnosis but is associated with a spectrum of clinically-relevant constructs.
  • Understanding these deviations in effort expenditure offers insights into transdiagnostic mechanisms in psychiatric illness.
  • The study identifies specific traits that modulate mental effort avoidance, contributing to a more nuanced view of cognitive effort in psychopathology.