Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-v2srd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-28T15:20:40.102Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cost-benefit models as the next, best option for understanding subjective effort

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2013

Robert Kurzban ,
Angela Duckworth ,
Joseph W. Kable  and
Justus Myers
Robert Kurzban
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. kurzban@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.google.com/site/pleeplab/ duckworth@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth kable@psych.upenn.edu http://www.psych.upenn.edu/kable_lab/Joes_Homepage/Home.html justusm@psych.upenn.edu
Angela Duckworth
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. kurzban@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.google.com/site/pleeplab/ duckworth@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth kable@psych.upenn.edu http://www.psych.upenn.edu/kable_lab/Joes_Homepage/Home.html justusm@psych.upenn.edu
Joseph W. Kable
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. kurzban@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.google.com/site/pleeplab/ duckworth@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth kable@psych.upenn.edu http://www.psych.upenn.edu/kable_lab/Joes_Homepage/Home.html justusm@psych.upenn.edu
Justus Myers
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. kurzban@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.google.com/site/pleeplab/ duckworth@psych.upenn.edu https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth kable@psych.upenn.edu http://www.psych.upenn.edu/kable_lab/Joes_Homepage/Home.html justusm@psych.upenn.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The commentaries on our target article are surprisingly sympathetic to our overall approach to explaining subjective effort, though disagreement with particulars inevitably emerged. Here, in our response, we first review the few disagreements concerning the basic structure of our proposal, highlighting areas in which little or no resistance was voiced. Opposition to the assumptions that underlie our opportunity cost model is noticeably limited. Areas of genuine disagreement, however, include: (1) the inputs to and outputs of the relevant decision-making systems; (2) how to interpret data regarding individual differences in performance; (3) how to explain persistence on tasks that give rise to the sensation of subjective effort; and (4) the details of the relevant neuropsychological systems. Throughout we point to empirical issues raised by the commentaries and suggest research that will be useful in arbitrating points of disagreement.

Information

Type
Authors' Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 36 , Issue 6 , December 2013 , pp. 707 - 726
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bartra, O., McGuire, J. T., & Kable, J. W. (2013) The valuation system: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of BOLD fMRI experiments examining neural correlates of subjective value. NeuroImage 76:412–27. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.02.063.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M. & Tice, D. M. (1998) Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(5):1252–65. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252.Google Scholar
Baumeister, R. F. & Tierney, J. (2011) Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength. Penguin Group.Google Scholar
Boksem, M. A. S., Meijman, T. F. & Lorist, M. M. (2006) Mental fatigue, motivation, and action monitoring. Biological Psychology 72(2):123–32.Google Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T. & Petty, R. E. (1982) The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42(1):116–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnov, E. L. (1976) Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem. Theoretical Population Biology 9(2):129–36.Google Scholar
Clarkson, J. J., Hirt, E. R., Austin Chapman, D. & Jia, L. (2011) The impact of illusory fatigue on executive control: Do perceptions of depletion impair working memory capacity? Social Psychological and Personality Science 2:231–38.Google Scholar
Clarkson, J. J., Hirt, E. R., Jia, L. & Alexander, M. B. (2010) When perception is more than reality: The effects of perceived versus actual resource depletion on self-regulatory behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98:29–46.Google Scholar
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994) Better than rational: Evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand. American Economic Review 84(2):327–32.Google Scholar
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000) Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. In: Handbook of emotions, 2nd edition, ed. Lewis, M. & Haviland-Jones, J. M., pp. 91–115. Guilford.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S. & Nakamura, J. (2005) Flow. In: Handbook of competence and motivation, ed. Elliot, A. J. & Dweck, C. S., pp. 598–608. The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Eisenberger, R. (1992) Learned industriousness. Psychological Review 99(2):248–67.Google Scholar
Frederick, S., Novemsky, N., Wang, J., Dhar, R. & Nowlis, S. (2009) Opportunity cost neglect. Journal of Consumer Research 36: 553–61.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. L. (2007) Carbohydrates and mental function: Feeding or impeding the brain? Nutrition Bulletin 32(Suppl. I):71–83.Google Scholar
Greene, J. & Haidt, J. (2002) How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6(12):517–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hagger, M. S., Wood, C., Stiff, C. & Chatzisarantis, N. L. D. (2010a) Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 136(4):495–525. doi:10.1037/a0019486.Google Scholar
Hancock, P. A. (2013) In search of vigilance: The problem of iatrogenically created psychological phenomena. American Psychologist 68(2):97–109.Google Scholar
Holzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R. & Ott, U. (2011) How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6:537–59.Google Scholar
Howe, M. J. A. & Smith, J. (1988) Calendar calculating in “idiots savants”: How do they do it? British Journal of Psychology 79(3):371–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Inzlicht, M. & Gutsell, J. N. (2007) Running on empty: Neural signals for self-control failure. Psychological Science 18(11):933–37.Google Scholar
Job, V., Dweck, C. S. & Walton, G. M. (2010) Ego depletion – Is it all in your head? Implicit theories about willpower affect self-regulation. Psychological Science 21(11):1686–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kahneman, D. & Beatty, J. (1966) Pupil diameter and load on memory. Science 154(3756):1583–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kurzban, R. (2010a) Does the brain consume additional glucose during self-control tasks? Evolutionary Psychology 8(2):244–59.Google Scholar
Lennie, P. (2003) The cost of cortical computation. Current Biology 13:493–97.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. (2012) Obama's way. Vanity Fair, October 5, 2012. Available at: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama.Google Scholar
Lorist, M. M., Boksem, M. A. S. & Ridderinkhof, K. R. (2005) Impaired cognitive control and reduced cingulate activity during mental fatigue. Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research 24(2):199–205. doi:10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2005.01.018.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Magen, E. & Gross, J. J. (2007) Harnessing the need for immediate gratification: Cognitive reconstrual modulates the reward value of temptations. Emotion 7(2):415–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Magen, E. & Gross, J. J. (2010) Getting our act together: Toward a general model of self-control. In: Self-control in society, mind and brain, ed. Hassin, R., Ochsner, K. & Trope, Y., pp. 335–53. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marr, D. (1982) Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
McVay, J. C. & Kane, M. J. (2010) Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). Psychological Bulletin 136(2):188–97.Google Scholar
Mikhail, J. (2007) Universal moral grammar: Theory, evidence and the future. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11(4):143–52.Google Scholar
Mischel, W., Shoda, Y. & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989) Delay of gratification in children. Science 244: 933–38.Google Scholar
Montague, R. (2006b) Your brain is (almost) perfect: How we make decisions. Penguin.Google Scholar
Nassar, M. R., Rumsey, K. M., Wilson, R. C., Parikh, K., Heasly, B. & Gold, J. I. (2012) Rational regulation of learning dynamics by pupil-linked arousal systems. Nature Neuroscience 15:1040–46.Google Scholar
Navon, D. (1984) Resources – A theoretical soup stone? Psychological Review 91(2):216–34.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (2002) The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. Viking.Google Scholar
Rachlin, H. (2000) The science of self-control. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schimmack, U. (2012) The ironic effect of significant results on the credibility of multiple-study articles. Psychological Methods 17(4):551–66. doi: 10.1037/a0029487.Google Scholar
Simoncelli, E. P. & Olhausen, B. A. (2001) Natural image statistics and neural representation. Annual Review of Neuroscience 24:1193–216.Google Scholar
Smallwood, J. & Schooler, J. W. (2006) The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin 132(6):946–58.Google Scholar