Why does effort feel worth it to some people and too costly to others? A UNSW-led research project is investigating what motivates us to persist – and the role of human connection.
Some people would rather walk away with $10 than earn $20 by doing a tedious task. It isn’t necessarily laziness, more that somewhere between the promise of a reward and the prospect of 30 mind-numbing minutes, the extra $10 just doesn’t seem worth it.
The private psychological cost of effort is one of the least understood forces shaping success, with effects across education, health, work engagement, innovation and society.
Through a Discovery Project grant from the Australian Research Council, UNSW Sydney psychology Professor Steve Most and an international team are researching 'effort aversion' – the degree to which people devalue rewards when work is required.
He explores this hidden cost to help explain why people procrastinate, disengage from learning, avoid exercise, rely on artificial intelligence (AI), or fail to persist when things get complicated and emotionally charged.
“Australia's 'fair go' ethos suggests that success should come to those who put in the effort,” Prof. Most says.
“So it's an important challenge when some people find effort more aversive than others.”
The price of the payoff
Prof. Most says effort is likely more important for success than intelligence. Success often takes discipline, he says, particularly when faced with something you don't want to be doing.
He and his students ran a simple experiment in his lab where participants were offered a choice – take $10 and walk away, or take $20, but only if you complete a deliberately tedious task.
“People differ in how little they would be willing to walk away with if it means they don't have to put in the effort,” he says.
The classic task was originally designed to measure ‘effort discounting’ – a psychological process where the prospect of work reduces the perceived value of a reward.
“Some people like to be challenged,” Prof. Most says.
“They might say, ‘Give me the $20. I don’t care how much effort’s in it.’
“Other people are like, ‘I’ll take $1 if it means I don’t have to do the effortful task.’”
In follow-up research, he and an Honours student found a 15-minute measure of effort motivation predicted students’ university grades across two terms. Students who were more willing to sacrifice a reward to avoid effort tended to achieve lower results.
“It was a more robust predictor than even their self-reported tendency to procrastinate,” Prof. Most says.
Leave it to ‘future me’
Effort can also seem less daunting when we leave it to our ‘future selves’.
“People are often in a position where they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, ‘future me’ can do that,’” Prof. Most says.
“But then as the task grows near, they’re like, ‘Why did I agree to that? I really resent ‘past me’ now.’”
In one of his lab’s initial studies on effort motivation, led by another of his Honours students, participants were significantly more willing to accept effortful tasks when the work was framed as belonging to their future self.
Prof. Most says this phenomenon – of kicking effort down the road – happens even when the consequences can be serious, such as when looking after one’s physical health, preparing taxes, or meeting deadlines.
He says this can scale beyond personal productivity. Political rhetoric invokes collective effort, he says, but in practice, climate policy, budget repair and infrastructure reform are often outsourced to ‘future Australia’.
Designing motivating environments
Prof. Most explores whether interpersonal connection operates as a key ingredient for maintaining people’s effort motivation – creating environments that cultivate effort, rather than demand it.
Recently, he and an Honours student ran an experiment in which two groups of participants heard identical lectures. One group was told the lecture was generated by AI, whereas the other was told it was delivered by a real person with a relatable backstory – someone who had struggled and doubted themselves but ultimately loved teaching.
“If you compare those two groups on their test performance, there was no difference,” Prof. Most says.
“But, the group that was told ‘this is a real person’ reported feeling more interpersonal connection with the lecturer,” he says.
“And those who felt more interpersonal connection reporting wanting to learn more about the topic itself.”
Prof. Most’s future studies will examine effort motivation among budding entrepreneurs, whether helping others encourages persistence and how curiosity and competition affect people’s willingness to work.
Insights from these studies will be important for classrooms, where students might be told to persist without being given a reason to care – and in workplaces, where disengagement is treated as a performance problem rather than a design problem. And in public life, too – where citizens are asked to absorb complexity while being surrounded by technologies built for ease.
“One of my favourite sayings is that ‘education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire’,” Prof. Most says.
“People need that fire because learning is hard. They need to want to put in the effort.
“I worry that this is getting lost amid the rapid moves we’re witnessing around the world to outsource education itself to AI.
“It’s giving short shrift to the spark of human connection.”
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Melissa Lyne, UNSW news & content
