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Judgments of effort exerted by others are influenced by received rewards.

ABSTRACT: Estimating invested effort is a core dimension for evaluating own and others' actions, and views on the relationship between effort and rewards are deeply ingrained in various societal attitudes. Internal representations of effort, however, are inherently noisy, e.g. due to the variability of sensorimotor and visceral responses to physical exertion. The uncertainty in effort judgments is further aggravated when there is no direct access to the internal representations of exertion - such as when estimating the effort of another person. Bayesian cue integration suggests that this uncertainty can be resolved by incorporating additional cues that are predictive of effort, e.g. received rewards. We hypothesized that judgments about the effort spent on a task will be influenced by the magnitude of received rewards. Additionally, we surmised that such influence might further depend on individual beliefs regarding the relationship between hard work and prosperity, as exemplified by a conservative work ethic. To test these predictions, participants performed an effortful task interleaved with a partner and were informed about the obtained reward before rating either their own or the partner's effort. We show that higher rewards led to higher estimations of exerted effort in self-judgments, and this effect was even more pronounced for other-judgments. In both types of judgment, computational modelling revealed that reward information and sensorimotor markers of exertion were combined in a Bayes-optimal manner in order to reduce uncertainty. Remarkably, the extent to which rewards influenced effort judgments was associated with conservative world-views, indicating links between this phenomenon and general beliefs about the relationship between effort and earnings in society.

SUBMITTER: Rollwage M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7002752 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Judgments of effort exerted by others are influenced by received rewards.

Rollwage Max M Pannach Franziska F Stinson Caedyn C Toelch Ulf U Kagan Igor I Pooresmaeili Arezoo A

Scientific reports 20200205 1

Estimating invested effort is a core dimension for evaluating own and others' actions, and views on the relationship between effort and rewards are deeply ingrained in various societal attitudes. Internal representations of effort, however, are inherently noisy, e.g. due to the variability of sensorimotor and visceral responses to physical exertion. The uncertainty in effort judgments is further aggravated when there is no direct access to the internal representations of exertion - such as when ...[more]

PMID: 32024898

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Project description:Many studies suggest that preschoolers initially privilege outcome over intention in their moral judgments. The present findings reveal that, in contrast, even younger preschoolers can privilege intentions when evaluating characters who successfully or unsuccessfully help or hinder a third party in achieving its goal. Following a live-action puppet show originally created for infant populations, children made a forced-choice social judgment (which puppet was liked) and two forced-choice moral judgments (which puppet was nicer, which puppet should be punished), and were asked to explain their punishment allocations. In two experiments (N = 195), 3- and 4-year-olds evaluated characters with distinct intentions to help or to hinder who were associated with either positive or negative outcomes. Both ages judged characters with more positive intentions as nicer, and allocated punishment to characters with more negative intentions; neither of these tendencies depended on the outcomes the characters were associated with. Three-year-olds' responses were somewhat less consistent than were 4-year-olds', in that 3-year-olds' judgments were disrupted by ambiguous harmful intent. Notably, children's social judgments were less consistent than their moral judgments. In a third and final experiment (N = 100), children evaluated characters with the same intention but who were associated with different outcomes. Children showed inconsistent responding across age and outcome valence, but only 4-year-olds evaluating two characters with positive intentions reliably responded based on outcome. When providing informative responses in all three studies, children most frequently explained their punishment allocations by appealing to the puppet's (attempted) hindering action or failure to help. These findings raise questions as to what underlies different patterns of response across studies in the literature, and suggests that observing live interactions may facilitate young children's intention-based moral judgments.

Project description:Distracted eating can lead to increased food intake, but it is unclear how. We aimed to assess how distraction affects motivated, goal-directed responses for food reward after satiation. Thirty-eight healthy normal-weight participants (28F; 10M) performed a visual detection task varying in attentional load (high vs. low distraction) during fMRI. Simultaneously, they exerted effort for sweet and savory food rewards by repeated button presses. Two fMRI runs were separated by sensory-specific satiation (outcome devaluation) of one of the (sweet or savory) reward outcomes, to assess outcome-sensitive, goal-directed, responses (valued vs. devalued reward, post vs. pre satiation). We could not verify our primary hypothesis that more distraction leads to less activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during goal-directed effort. Behaviorally, distraction also did not affect effort for food reward following satiation across subjects. For our secondary hypothesis, we assessed whether distraction affected other fronto-striatal regions during goal-directed effort. We did not obtain such effects at our whole-brain corrected threshold, but at an exploratory uncorrected threshold (p?<?0.001), distraction decreased goal-directed responses (devalued vs. valued) in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG). We continued with this rIFG region for the next secondary hypothesis; specifically, that distraction would reduce functional connectivity with the fronto-striatal regions found in the previous analyses. Indeed, distraction decreased functional connectivity between the rIFG and left putamen for valued versus devalued food rewards (pFWE(cluster)?<?0.05). In an exploratory brain-behavior analysis, we showed that distraction-sensitive rIFG-responses correlated negatively (r?=?- 0.40; p?=?0.014) with the effect of distraction on effort. Specifically, decreased distraction-related rIFG-responses were associated with increased effort for food reward after satiation. We discuss the absence of distraction effects on goal-directed responses in vmPFC and in behavior across participants. Moreover, based on our significant functional connectivity and brain-behavior results, we suggest that distraction might attenuate the ability to inhibit responses for food reward after satiation by affecting the rIFG and its connection to the putamen.

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Judgments of effort exerted by others are influenced by received rewards.

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Judgments of effort exerted by others are influenced by received rewards.

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