ArticleScientific reports2015
The role of cognitive effort in subjective reward devaluation and risky decision-making.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reducing cognitive demand fails to mitigate choice overload: Multimodal neural and gaze evidence for effort conservation.iScience · 2026Article
- Motivation to exert effort dynamically adapts to reward context and environmental controllability.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Temporal dynamics of effort discounting: The roles of cognitive load and depression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Shared and distinct features of common effort-based decision-making paradigms and their relation to brain structure and neuropsychiatric conditions: An integrated narrative review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- How visual and proprioceptive feedback mediate the effect of monetary incentive on motor precision.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Influence of Televisibility and Harm Probability on Clinical-Ethical Decision Making.Behavior analysis in practice · 2025Article
- Shielding working memory from distraction is more effortful than flexible updating.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- In Search of a Neural Mechanism for Domain-General Value Comparison in Decision Making.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Getting a grip on visual search: Relating effort exertion to the control of attention.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Review
- The Neurocomputational Mechanism Underlying Decision-Making on Unfairness to Self and Others.Neuroscience bulletin · 2024Article
- Human ventromedial prefrontal cortex is necessary for prosocial motivation.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Cognitive mechanisms of learning in sequential decision-making under uncertainty: an experimental and theoretical approach.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Body appearance values modulate risk aversion in eating restriction.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2023Article
- Policy abstraction as a predictor of cognitive effort avoidance.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2023Article
- Economic Choice and Heart Rate Fractal Scaling Indicate That Cognitive Effort Is Reduced by Depression and Boosted by Sad Mood.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2023Article
- Measuring cognitive effort without difficulty.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Distinct neural representations for prosocial and self-benefiting effort.Current biology : CB · 2022Article
- Framing cognitive offloading in terms of gains or losses: achieving a more optimal use of reminders.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Cost-benefit considerations have limited effect on the decision to exert cognitive effort in real-world computer-programming tasks.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Motivation is underpinned by cost-benefit valuations where costs-such as physical effort or outcome risk-are subjectively weighed against available rewards. However, in many environments risks pertain not to the variance of outcomes, but to variance in the possible levels of effort required to obtain rewards (effort risks). Moreover, motivation is often guided by the extent to which cognitive-not physical-effort devalues rewards (effort discounting). Yet, very little is known about the mechanisms that underpin the influence of cognitive effort risks or discounting on motivation. We used two cost-benefit decision-making tasks to probe subjective sensitivity to cognitive effort (number of shifts of spatial attention) and to effort risks. Our results show that shifts of spatial attention when monitoring rapidly presented visual stimuli are perceived as effortful and devalue rewards. Additionally, most people are risk-averse, preferring safe, known amounts of effort over risky offers. However, there was no correlation between their effort and risk sensitivity. We show for the first time that people are averse to variance in the possible amount of cognitive effort to be exerted. These results suggest that cognitive effort sensitivity and risk sensitivity are underpinned by distinct psychological and neurobiological mechanisms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.