It's not just your students: people all over the world really don't like to think.
At least that's what the results of a new study suggest. Published in Psychological BulletinThe study examined data from 170 previous studies that looked at motivation, which together involved thousands of participants from different cultures.
“Overall, mental effort was perceived as aversive across different types of tasks (e.g., tasks with and without feedback), across different types of populations (e.g., college-educated and non-college-educated populations), and across different continents,” the study authors write. “In support of theories conceptualizing effort as a cost, we suggest that mental effort is inherently aversive.”
You probably don't want to think about it any further, but if you're willing to make the effort, two of the study's co-authors discuss how the research was conducted and what its implications are for educators.
Thought and motivation
The inspiration for the research was a decades-old debate in psychology about mental effort, says study co-author Erik Bijleveld, who is a psychologist and professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands.
“On the one hand, we know that people avoid mental effort when they can,” says Bijleveld. “On the other hand, psychologists also assume that people can easily learn the associations between mental effort and rewards. For example, in schools and universities, students are often congratulated after they have made mental effort. So there are many opportunities in life to learn that mental effort is linked to reward. If this is true, it is quite possible that people can learn to enjoy mental effort.”
Thinking is even more unpleasant than we think
Bijleveld and his co-authors were surprised by how little rewards seem to do to change that attitude. “Even in tasks that have game-like characteristics, such as performance feedback, it turns out that mental effort is still very unpleasant,” Bijleveld says. “Even people who have likely been rewarded for mental effort many times in the past, such as college-educated people, still experience mental effort as unpleasant.”
He adds that he and his colleagues found that mental effort is unpleasant in a wide variety of settings and contexts. “We really looked hard for possible exceptions—maybe effort is pleasant only in some tasks or only for some people—but we didn't find any convincing evidence for this,” he says.
What does all this mean for educators?
Louise David, co-author of the study, says the research has many implications for educators.
“Since learning is often associated with mental effort, students, like other people, may tend to minimize mental effort due to the discomfort associated with it,” says David.
With this in mind, educators should focus on creating structured and supportive learning environments that, for example, balance challenging tasks with guided practice, scaffolding, and clear instructions, he says. Incorporating elements of gamification and working to connect students more deeply with the material could also help. “Tasks that provide meaning, accountability, and feedback could reduce the aversive nature of mental effort,” David says.
Another important step might be to recognize student effort rather than just outcomes. “Learning isn’t always fun and it’s not always enjoyable,” says David. “By recognizing and rewarding student effort, not just learning outcomes, educators can foster a more positive association with cognitive activities that require effort.”
Of course, mental effort is not all bad.
Educators and their students should also remember that aversion to difficult tasks is not unique to them and is not always a bad thing. Similarly, feeling tired when exercising can be a good sign for someone who is getting fit.
“In the case of mental effort, unpleasantness can have a purpose. For example, there is this effect called 'The IKEA effect“The idea is that if people invest more effort into making or creating something, this increases the degree to which they value the product of their work. So if people invested effort into something, this tells them that that something is very meaningful or valuable to them. After all, why would they have endured the discomfort of effort?”
He adds that, in this sense, “the unpleasantness of mental effort can serve as a compass for people, giving them direction regarding what matters to them and, by extension, who they are as people.”
