An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance

By Robert Kurzban, Angela L. Duckworth, Joseph W. Kable, J. Myers. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2013

1,083 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Why does performing certain tasks cause the aversive experience of mental effort and concomitant deterioration in task performance? One explanation posits a physical resource that is depleted over time. We propose an alternate explanation that centers on mental representations of the costs and benefits associated with task performance. Specifically, certain computational mechanisms, especially those associated with executive function, can be deployed for only a limited number of simultaneous tasks at any given moment. Consequently, the deployment of these computational mechanisms carries an opportunity cost – that is, the next-best use to which these systems might be put. We argue that the phenomenology of effort can be understood as the felt output of these cost/benefit computations. In turn, the subjective experience of effort motivates reduced deployment of these computational mechanisms in the service of the present task. These opportunity cost representations, then, together with other cost/benefit calculations, determine effort expended and, everything else equal, result in performance reductions. In making our case for this position, we review alternate explanations both for the phenomenology of effort associated with these tasks and for performance reductions over time. Likewise, we review the broad range of relevant empirical results from across subdisciplines, especially psychology and neuroscience. We hope that our proposal will help to build links among the diverse fields that have been addressing similar questions from different perspectives, and we emphasize ways in which alternate models might be empirically distinguished.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d8ea705a662d623b5d7076d75b4f967f6e581c9

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Citations in the corpus

Rational Use of Cognitive Resources: Levels of Analysis Between the Computational and the Algorithmic (2015, background): “So far we have only considered the cost of time, but resource-rational analysis can also incorporate metabolic costs (Gershman & Wilson, 2010) and mental opportunity costs (cf. Kurzban, Duckworth, Kable, & Myers, 2013).”
Cognitive Offloading. (2016, background): “There has been much recent work on the tendency of individuals to avoid this type of effort [87,88].”
The past, present, and future of ego depletion (2019, background): “For example, both updates (Baumeister & Vohs, 2016b; Evans, Boggero, & Segerstrom, 2016) and alternatives to the resource model (Inzlicht et al., 2014; Kurzban et al., 2013) suggest motivation plays a critical role (as moderator for the former and mediation for the latter).”
Self-Control in School-Age Children (2014, background): “Moreover, taking action at earlier phases reduces the phenomenological experience of self-control—the aversive feeling familiar to us all who have struggled internally to do what we ought to do instead of what in the moment would be more gratifying (Inzlicht & Legault, 2014; Kurzban et al., 2013).”
Multitasking Capability Versus Learning Efficiency in Neural Network Architectures (2017, background): “…most fundamental puzzles concerning human processing, which must be addressed by any general theory of cognition (Shenhav, Botvinick, & Cohen, 2013; Kurzban, Duckworth, Kable, & Myers, 2013; Anderson, 2013): Why, for some tasks, is the human mind capable of a remarkable degree of parallelism…”
Motivation and cognitive control: from behavior to neural mechanism. (2015, background): “Another will be to determine how the neural mechanisms underlying these functional aspects of effort relate to those giving rise to the subjective experience of effort (Kurzban et al. 2013).”
Situational Strategies for Self-Control (2016, background): “Even when successful, exercising executive function is reliably effortful and, in most cases, at least mildly aversive (Inzlicht, Legault, & Teper, 2014; Kurzban et al., 2013; Westbrook & Braver, 2015).”
The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued (2018, background): “, to integrate representations of effort costs), providing a normative account of the overall expected value (EV) of a given allocation of effort [23,131] (see also [55,132,133]): EVðeffort; stateÞ 1⁄4 i Prðoutcomei jeffort; stateÞ ValueðoutcomeiÞ þ ValueðeffortÞ [I]”
Consumer Neuroscience: Applications, Challenges, and Possible Solutions (2015, background): “In this section, we focus on five concrete ways in which neuroscientific tools can be applied to improve understanding of marketing theories and consumer behavior.”
Integrating memories to guide decisions (2015, background): “More generally, this is a promising instance of a broader trend in cognitive neuroscience toward rational cost-benefit analyses of cognitive control phenomena [55,56].”