Making Progress on the Effort Paradox: Progress Information Moderates Cognitive Demand Avoidance

The law of least mental effort suggests that humans seek to minimize cognitive effort exertion. It is thought that we do so because effort is inherently aversive, playing the cost function in a cost-benefit analysis. However, this is not always the case: Some human activities are valued precisely because they are effortful. This dual nature of effort as valued and costly is known as the Effort Paradox. The question is therefore: what features differentiate an aversively effortful task from a valued one? In the current study, we explore how perceived progress might be one of these features. Across two experiments, we demonstrate that people willfully choose to engage in more demanding cognitive tasks when doing so yields telegraphed progress information. These results suggest that perceived progress may play a moderating role in cognitive effort aversion and hints at the possibility that progress itself may be an inherently valuable stimulus