Dysphoria as a moderator of the relationship between perceived effort and perceived ability

Although Heiderian logic (F. Heider, 1958) proposes an inverse relationship between ability and effort, research has uncovered dramatic individual differences in the judged relationship between the two. Some view ability and effort as positively related; others view them as negatively related. Study 1 explored dysphoria as a moderator of this relationship by gathering dysphoric and nondysphoric individuals' perceptions of their effort and ability on daily activities. Although ability and effort generally were positively related, dysphorics reported lower ability on high effort tasks. In Study 2, Ss rated their effort as high or low. Dysphorics discounted ability when effort was high; nondysphorics reported the greatest ability when they expended the greatest effort. Collectively, there was no support for an inverse relationship between ability and effort. However, dysphorics infer less ability than nondysphorics following high effort.