Motivational context determines the impact of aversive outcomes on mental effort allocation

It is well known that people will exert effort on a task if sufficiently motivated, but how they distribute these efforts across different strategies (e.g., efficiency vs. caution) remains uncertain. Past work has shown that people invest effort differently for potential positive outcomes (rewards) versus potential negative outcomes (penalties). However, this research failed to account for differences in the context in which negative outcomes motivate someone - either as punishment or reinforcement. It is therefore unclear whether effort profiles differ as a function of outcome valence, motivational context, or both. Using computational modeling and our novel Multi-Incentive Control Task, we show that the influence of aversive outcomes on one's effort profile is entirely determined by their motivational context. Participants (N:91) favored increased caution in response to larger penalties for incorrect responses, and favored increased efficiency in response to larger reinforcement for correct responses, whether positively or negatively incentivized.