The experience of cognitive conflict is intrinsically rewarding

The co-activation of two incompatible responses leads to the experience of cognitive conflict, which is thought to be aversive and hence, generally avoided. Consequently, previous research has often rewarded participants monetarily for engaging in cognitive conflict. In contrast, here, across two experiments (N = 100 each), participants freely chose the level of cognitive conflict they wanted to engage in the Simon (experiment 1) and Stroop tasks (experiment 2) with no external reward. In both experiments, we found that participants chose to freely engage with cognitive conflict, evaluated it as effortful yet enjoyable, and reported feeling surprised and enthusiastic after experiencing high cognitive conflict. Overall, these findings suggest that cognitive conflict is valued and can function as an intrinsic reward, despite the effort associated with it. These results broaden the neuroeconomic approach to cognitive control theories by integrating a hedonic perspective on the subjective experience of cognitive conflict.