The effort paradox: Exploring effort's costs and benefits

认知控制使人们能够控制自己的心灵、身体和思想，远离日常生活的诱惑，朝着更安全、更健康的目标前进。虽然它可以通过看似微不足道的任务（例如，颜色命名）来评估，但认知控制预测了各种令人印象深刻的个人和社会意义行为，包括体重增加，大学成绩，问题赌博和成瘾。鉴于认知控制的广泛影响，它的研究不仅对认知科学家，而且对经济学家和其他政策制定者都具有重要意义。该研究计划建立在我过去对认知控制的基本过程的研究基础上，特别是我对认知控制的情感和神经基础的研究。通过研究控制的现象学，我不仅证实了控制让人感到不愉快，以焦虑、沮丧和努力的感觉为特征，我还研究了这种不愉快的情绪是如何与诱发的脑电位、神经振荡、瞳孔扩张和面部肌肉运动相对应的。考虑到这些情绪以及随之而来的生理和神经状态，我的研究促成了这样一种观点，即控制所需的努力是不愉快的，人们会回避它。提出的假设驱动研究计划的主要目标是探索这种努力回避，以提供如何克服它的线索。具体来说，我考察了控制成本背后的神经过程，不仅询问了努力的控制在什么时候是昂贵的，而且还询问了如何对其进行评估。作为这个项目的一部分，我将探索如何增加努力控制的价值，让人们更愿意参与其中。与认知神经科学和经济学的主流观点相反，我最近提出了一个努力悖论的存在：我认为，努力不仅代价高昂，而且有价值。有时候，人们认为，如果付出更多（而不是更少）的努力来获得同样的结果（例如，跑马拉松），就会得到更多的回报。当高努力与高回报反复配对时，努力本身甚至可以被体验为有价值或有回报。尽管支持努力悖论的证据越来越多，但我的框架的某些方面需要进一步的经验支持，尤其是在人类大脑的层面上。在这里，我试图将努力可以增加价值的丰富证据与神经科学和经济学中占主导地位的努力模型结合起来。总而言之，通过研究努力悖论，我可以推进努力理论及其广泛应用。我特别探讨了努力是如何为我们过去努力的成果增加价值的；而且，努力如何增加价值，成为第二强化物，本身就有回报。鉴于努力可以增加未来价值的证据，我还研究了我是否可以通过培训和奖励努力来增加努力的意愿。

Cognitive control allows people to restrain their hearts, bodies, and minds away from the temptations of everyday life and toward safer and healthier ambitions. Although it can be assessed by seemingly trivial tasks (e.g., color naming), cognitive control predicts an impressive variety of behaviors of both personal and societal significance, including weight gain, university grades, problem gambling, and addiction. Given its far reach, the study of cognitive control is of great importance not only to cognitive scientists, but also to economists and other policy makers. The proposed program of research builds on my past work on the basic processes underlying cognitive control, especially my research on the emotional and neural foundations of cognitive control. By studying the phenomenology of control, I have confirmed not only that control feels unpleasant, characterized by feelings of anxiety, frustration, and effort, I have also examined how this unpleasant emotion corresponds with evoked brain potentials, neural oscillations, pupil dilation, and facial muscle movements. Given these emotions and attendant physiological and neurological states, my research has contributed to the view that the effort required for control is unpleasant and that people avoid it. The primary objective of the proposed program of hypothesis-driven research is to explore this effort avoidance to offer clues about how to overcome it. In specific, I examine the neural processes underlying the costs of control by asking not only when effortful control is costly, but also how it might be valued. As part of this program, I will explore how to increase the value of effortful control so that people become more willing to engage it. In contrast to the dominant view in cognitive neuroscience and economics, I have recently proposed the existence of an effort paradox: effort, I suggested, is not only costly, but also valued. Sometimes humans view the same outcomes as more rewarding if more (not less) effort was used to attain them (e.g., running a marathon). Effort can even be experienced as valuable or rewarding in its own right, when high effort is repeatedly paired with high reward. Although there is a convergence of evidence supporting the effort paradox, some aspects of my framework need further empirical support, especially at the level of the human brain. Here, I attempt to integrate the rich evidence that effort can add value with dominant models of effort in neuroscience and economics. In sum, by investigating the effort paradox, I can advance effort theorizing and its widespread applications. I specifically explore how effort adds value retrospectively to the products of our past efforts; but also, how effort adds value prospectively, becoming a secondary reinforcer and rewarding by itself. Given the evidence that effort can add value prospectively, I also examine if I can increase effort willingness by training and rewarding effort.