There has been a long debate among scientists about whether we find mental effort pleasurable. Some researchers are convinced that we avoid thinking as much as possible because it makes us feel aversion. But there are also those who say that we seek out mental effort because we associate it with rewards such as positive feedback.
Until now, these assumptions have not been tested. That’s what psychologist Erik Bielefeld of Radboud University did, in collaboration with researchers Louise David and Eliana Fassina. They conducted a meta-analysis of 170 studies published in 2019 and 2020, examining the levels of discomfort and frustration experienced by 4,670 unique individuals—including healthcare workers, military personnel, office workers, and amateur athletes—while performing various cognitive tasks, such as testing new equipment.
The results showed that hard thinking elicited negative emotions in almost all cases across populations and tasks. “The results were really striking: It didn’t matter where you live or what your profession is, thinking is annoying to everyone,” says Bielefeld. Even people who are often rewarded for mental effort, such as college-educated people, experience mentally demanding tasks as annoying. Their emotions are just as negative as those of, say, people who work on an assembly line.
“We know that people don’t like to do physical work because our evolutionary history has made us want to limit unnecessary physical effort as much as possible,” says Bielefeld. “But we know much less about mental effort. That explains why sometimes you start something but still quickly check your social media.”
It’s all about the reward.
What about people who voluntarily do Sudoku, play chess, or play Candy Crush? “We do it primarily because of the reward, not because we enjoy it so much,” says Bielefeld. So we’re not intrinsically motivated to think hard, but the good feeling we get when something works makes some people still want to play such games. In other words, we don’t think hard because of the effort, but in spite of it.
According to the researchers, developers of educational materials or new software, for example, would do well to take into account the negative emotions their products evoke. If you want people to master a new app or a new algorithm, it is smart to reward them, for example by adding game elements such as effects or nice sounds.
What about generative AI, AI models designed to generate new text, for example? Can’t they save people a lot of the hassle of thinking? “This kind of AI doesn’t make life more enjoyable either,” says Bielefeld. “We may experience less negative emotions during the work itself, but we also value the results of that work less because it didn’t cost us as much effort. When you work hard for something, it becomes more meaningful. AI takes that away from us.”
