Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Effort justification

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

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Figure 1. Simone Biles wins gold at the 2016 Olympics which earned her $37,500 Scenario 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 poses 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.

Other reasons for exerting effort that relate to self-esteem are explored in this chapter, discussing how the relationship between exertion of effort and self-esteem works and how having a healthy amount of self-esteem is important for quality of life and social relationships. This ultimately adds to the argument that exertion of effort is worth it for the sake of itself.

Focus questions 1. Is effort worth exerting if the goal does not have the same objective value as the amount of effort exerted? 2. How is the human brain wired to reward us for exertion of effort? 3. How does exertion of effort ultimately improve our lives, or should we be slave to the effort justifcation paradox and only put in effort when the reward is equal to or more than the effort exerted?

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 can be seen in various areas of everyday life and is explained through different psychological, social and biological theories. 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.

If something costs effort, then it must be worth it. This is the underlying belief of effort justification and is what ultimately causes a paradox when something may not be "worth it". The paradox of effort justification and its link to cognitive dissonance theory is hopeless in a way. Upon first read it reminds us as humans about how rediculous we can be, fooling ourselves to think something we are doing that is difficult is also worth doing. How does this knowledge and understanding help us improve our lives and give us motivation?

There is evidence to suggest that effort does not work like money and that unlike with money, sometimes the more effort you "spend" on something, the more it ends up being worth. You cannot spend more money on the same carton of milk and have it somehow increase its practical value, but people often report feeling better about something or valuing something more if they put more effort into it, not less (Inzlicht et al., 2018).

We as a species are smarter than we give ourselves credit for. Evolution is said to select what works, so if we expend effort to complete a rudimentary task and we justify it, there must be a reason as to why. Indeed, there are many reasons and this chapter will explore them, hoping to show how we can improve our motivational and emotional lives by understanding that when you try your hardest, when you give it your all, it is worth itTemplate:Rewrote.

The idea of effort justification originated from an experiment conducted by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959). The researchers 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. The way they carried out this experiment included asking participants of one group to read embarrassing and vulgar words to one another as an initiation to the group they were placed in. In comparison to another group of participants who did not have to perform this ritual, the value of membership in the group who did have to participate was reported as subjectively higher. This hypothesis being confirmed in their findings was the first studied example of this so-called effort paradox.

The relationship between effort justification, 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. An important question to ask about the effort justification paradox is how one defines "worth". The whole concept is based around the idea of a cost/benefit analysis where in every situation the cost is effort, but the benefit changes. You could run a marathon and potentially measure the cost of effort in a few ways. You could count the calories burnt, the time elapsed, the distance ran, the avergage heart rate and so on, but how would you go about measuring the benefit? How do you measure pride? Joy? Releif? What if someone enjoys being in a specific form of pain that suggests they pushed themselves to the limit? How can you tell them that their experience was not worth having because they burnt too many calories or elapsed too much time? You can't. This is because the "benefit" or the "worth" in this analysis is subjective. It all depends on how you perceive the experience. Every day, people are motivated to do things that do not make sense when you look through the lens of effort justification. A marathon runner would not say their training is nonsensical and of no meaning, they would be more likely to say that their training brings them purpose, and purpose is priceless.

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. People often have very good subjective reasoning to justify their efforts and these reasons are often based in perception and motivation.

Examples of effort justification

Every day, some people train for the Olympics even though 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. These examples show situations of people justifying their efforts based on how they perceive their motivations.

Making sense of the effort paradox

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. Giving effort has many benefits in a subjective manner, but the following areas of research will provide reason for objective value as well.

More current research in the field of effort shows that the subjective value of an outcome is raised if more effort is put into getting the outcome (Inzlicht et al., 2018). This might sound like cognitive dissonance at work, however it seems that people enjoy a product more if it required more effort, meaning that it is not just a discrenecy in beleifs being fixed, rather there is an emotional gain that is present.

Social reasons for effort justification

There are social theories behind the motivation to engage in high effort tasks. Effort justification is said to protect our self-esteem and sense of self worth (Moresapian, 2023) which can drastically effect how we 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 or concsiously justify theiry effort.

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 (aMCC). 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)

The anterior mid cingulate cortex (aMCC) is located medially and centrally in the brain and plays an important roles in in attention, motor and libmic processess (Margulies & Uddin, 2019). In the field of research concerning effort, there have been interesting findings that suggest aMCC signal is correlated with willingness to exert more effort (Bonnelle et al., 2015). When the aMCC is provided stimulation this 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). Furthermore, aMCC stimulation is strongly associated with tenacity, an important feature of perseverance.

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 strengthens the neural pathways associated with the 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).

Tenacity for tenacity's sake

The aMCC essentially serves as the brains centre for willpower and tenacity. Without a strong aMCC, depression is more likely, grit and growth mindsets are less likely, and ability to overcome hardship to get to a reward is compromised (Parvizi et al., 2013). Hardship is similar to pain; people have different tolerances. If hardship or pain stood in the way of reward, everyone would wish for a greater tolerance to both. This is the argument for training up tenacity. A tenacious individual will persist through hardship to get a reward, and even if the reward is small, the more tenacious they are, the more likely they are to commit anyway.

Why do people justify putting more effort than the reward is worth? There is a logical explanation when you take into account the possession of tenacity. Imagine an individual who has run a marathon and gets given a participation medal. One would argue through the lens of the effort justification paradox that that person has expended more effort than the reward is valuable. They might be right, however if this individual was so well trained, so tenacious and so persistent to the point that running a marathon for them was subjectively easy and they did it every two weeks, why not do it? If someone who was severely overweight and struggled more with taking their bin to a curb than this individual struggled with running a marathon there can be two guarantees. One is that the severely overweight person would not have the ability to a run a marathon, and two is that the marathon runner could easily take out their bin. So much so that they probably don’t even really notice taking out their bin. It would not cause pain, it would not exert effort, it would not require persistence. This logic suggest that being tenacious and being trained to do hard things makes the rest of life far easier, so you would much rather have the tenacity for tenacity’s sake.

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 justify effort 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

1 aMCC stimulation increases perseverance:

	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 objective 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 (Moresapian, 2023), 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, including the trait of tenacity (Touroutoglou et al., 2020). Effort justification is well justified when these 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/

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

Inzlicht, M., Shenhav, A., & Olivola, C. Y. (2018). The effort paradox: Effort is both costly and valued. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(4), 337–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.007

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

Margulies, D. S., & Uddin, L. Q. (2019). Network convergence zones in the anterior midcingulate cortex. Handbook of Clinical Neurology, 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-444-64196-0.00007-8

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

Turner, J. C. (1987). Rediscovering the Social Group: A self-categorization theory. Basil Blackwell.

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 resilience and tenacity.