Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Effort justification

Effort justification:
What is it and how does it influence perception and motivation?

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Overview

Figure 1. Simone Biles wins gold at the 2016 Olympics which earned her $37,500 You are training for the Olympic games. It is your lifetime goal to get gold in your chosen sport and over the years you have persisted through injuries and adversity just to get the chance at gold. The games come around, and you shine, maybe you even break a world record, and at the end of it all you are given your gold medal and compensation for your efforts from the Australian Government. You are paid 20,000 dollars. This sum of money has zero chance of covering the amount you have paid in both money for the appropriate training facilities, nutrition, coaching, medical bills for your injuries along the way and importantly, for your effort. All this aside you convince yourself that it was worth it for the glory of gold, for the pride in your country and for the legacy it creates for you. This is a much better way to frame the scenario than to remain in a state of distress about the imbalance between effort and reward. This is an example of effort justification.

This book chapter explores the idea of effort justification and pose the question of whether it is the paradox it is reported to be based on cognitive dissonance theory, or whether there is good reason to believe that effort is worth exerting.

The counter to cognitive dissonance theory is the nature and activity of a specific brain region called the anterior mid cingulate cortex (aMCC). The aMCC is the brains centre for effort prediction and justification. A healthy aMCC is associated with success in many areas of life, perseverance and tenacity and willingness to both exert effort and live. Its existence and functions challenge the idea that exertion of effort requires equal tangible reward. Another way of looking at this would be to say that exertion of effort obtains reward through length of life and quality of life and therefore the nature of the human brain does not allow a discrepancy between effort and reward to exist, because it rewards effort itself.

Focus questions etc.

Introduction

What is effort justification?

• Effort justification involves placing high subjective value on achievements that cost more effort, even if that actual objective worth of the achievement was low. (Moresapien, 2023).
• Effort justification is rooted in cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) which states that people will try to repair inconstancies and discrepancies in their beliefs.
• The discrepancy of ideas in effort justification is between the amount of effort a goal costs and the low objective value of the goal. The reparation of this discrepancy consists of an alteration of perception towards the subjective value of the goal.

History

• The idea of effort justification originated from an experiment conducted by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959)
• They hypothesises that if a group required a person to engage in an unpleasant initiation ritual to join the group, individuals would value membership of that group higher than if it did not require that ritual.
• This hypothesis was confirmed in their findings and was the first studied example of this so-called effort paradox.

How does effort justification effect perception and motivation?

• People find all kinds of ways to shift their perception and place meaning on the things they participate in. In a way this makes life far more liveable because if achievements were only worth it if the objective reward was equal to the effort, we would not be motivated to do things for the experience.

Where does effort justification exist?

• Effort justification appears a lot in life once you start to evaluate people’s behaviour with the formula in mind. Does the effort equal the objective reward? If yes, there is no discrepancy, but if it does not, there is. If there is a discrepancy, does the subjective value placed on the goal by the individual who put in the effort make up for it? If yes, there is effort justification.
• Effort justification does not necessarily mean that nothing in life is worth it unless it has an equal objective value to the cost of effort, because life is ultimately very subjective.

Examples of effort justification

• Every day, people train for the Olympics even thought they get paid nothing for it, but they would not change a thing.
• Some regular 9 to 5 employees go to the gym every night to get bigger muscles even though they do not get any reward for having them, they simply enjoy the part where they move weight around.
• University students will work for years to obtain a piece of paper and will tell you that they got much more than a piece of paper, they have an education and access to opportunities to work.

If effort justification is a paradox, why do we do it?

• There are a few different ways to explain effort justifcation. The original idea is that it is linked to cognitive dissonance and is simply a way of reframing our own personal narratives to remove discomfort from the way we view the decisions we have made. There are other social and biological ways to explain effort justification, however.

Social reasons for effort justification

• There are social theories behind this motivation to engage in high effort tasks
• Effort justification is said be protect our self esteem and sense of self worth (Moresapian, 2023) which can drastically effort how interact in social setting. Individuals with low self esteem struggle to create and maintain relationships (Juth et al., 2008) which creates a further downward turn for mental health (Umberson & Karas Montez, 2010).
• This trail of logic gives socially themed reasons as to why an individual may subconsciously engage in effort justification

Biological reasons for effort justification

• Could there also be something biologically and individually important about engaging in difficult tasks?
• The human brain has many systems from many functions and through its evolution it has selected carefully what it needs. One of the most interesting selections it has been is the anterior mid cingulate cortex. This brain region has been studied as the brains centre for motivational functions like the prediction of energy to achieve goals (Touroutoglou et al., 2020).

Anterior Mid Cingulate Cortex (aMCC) functions

• aMCC signal is correlated with willingness to exert more effort (Bonnelle et al., 2015).
• aMCC stimulation creates an increase in one’s willingness to persevere (Parvizi et al., 2013).
• It is likely that the aMCC is compromised in depressed individuals, resulting in less willingness to expend effort for reward (Touroutoglou et al., 2020)
• aMCC stimulation occurs in difficult situations and increases ones willingness to persevere. AMCC stimulation is strongly associated with tenacity, an important feature of perseverance

Is effort justification justified biologically, socially or both?

Combining the idea that a healthy aMCC leads to a healthy person due to the fact that perseverance leads to many better life outcomes and the way that one grows or strengthens their aMCC includes taking on difficult or challenging tasks, leads to the suggestion that effort justification is actually rooted in survival and life optimisation. (Touroutoglou et al., 2020)

There is also justification through a social lens due to the role effort justification plays in self-identity and self-esteem which directly effects how people interact socially, which then effects their mental health, effecting physical health.

Self-esteem

To further understand self-esteem, it is important to note that there are lots of approaches to maintain self-esteem.

Self-esteem can be directly associated with the ratio of successes and failures in one’s life (James, 1983)

With this in mind, it is interesting to consider how self-esteem and an individual’s ability to “effort justify” could have a direct link.

Someone who views putting in a high amount of effort, no matter the limit on the reward, is more likely to have a higher self-worth if they determine their self-worth by success.

Quiz your knowledge!

1 aMCC stimulation increases perseverence:

	True
	False

2 A mountain climber wanting to climb the taller out of two mountains just because it is taller is an example of effort justification:

	True
	False

Conclusion

Effort justification involves placing high subjective value on an achievement where the reward was not equal to the amount of effort cost in order to justify to exerted effort. The idea originated in an experiment done by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959) and is rooted in cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) due to the discrepancy between effort and reward and the need to repair this inconsistency in our minds.

Effort justification has a positive effect towards our general motivation, as it fights against a strict cost benefit ratio that would prevent us from doing anything that is more difficult than it is rewarding. There are many examples of effort justification in everyday life, all that is required is someone to subjectively value a goal more than it is objectively valuable.

Why would we justify high amount of effort if there is no reward? There are social reasons that relate to self-esteem and mental health (reference), and also biological reasons that relate to the stimulation of the anterior mid cingulate cortex which ultimately has a lot of benefits for the individual’s health and life (reference). Effort justification is well justified when the social and biological reasons are taken into account.

See also

Behavioural economics (Wikipedia)

Effort justification (Wikipedia)

IKEA effect (Wikipedia)

References

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177–181. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047195

Bonnelle, V., Manohar, S., Behrens, T., & Husain, M. (2015). Individual differences in premotor brain systems underlie behavioral apathy. Cerebral Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhv247

Effort justification. Effort Justification. (2023, September 8). https://moresapien.org/cognitive-dissonance/effort-justification/#:~:text=It’s%20a%20subconscious%20process%20designed,rewards%20are%20worth%20the%20effort.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.

James, W. (1983). The principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Juth, V., Smyth, J. M., & Santuzzi, A. M. (2008). How do you feel? Journal of Health Psychology, 13(7), 884–894. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105308095062

Parvizi, J., Rangarajan, V., Shirer, W. R., Desai, N., & Greicius, M. D. (2013). The will to persevere induced by electrical stimulation of the human cingulate gyrus. Neuron, 80(6), 1359–1367. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.10.057

Touroutoglou, A., Andreano, J., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2020). The tenacious brain: How the anterior mid-cingulate contributes to achieving goals. Cortex, 123, 12–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2019.09.011

Umberson, D., & Karas Montez, J. (2010). Social Relationships and Health: A flashpoint for health policy. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51(1_suppl). https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383501

External links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLb8_wgX50 (Andrew Huberman, 2024). This Podcast mentions research done on the anterior mid cingulate cortex and how it is associated with resillience and tenacity