Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2010 Nov;139(4):665-82. doi: 10.1037/a0020198.
Behavioral and economic theories have long maintained that actions are chosen so as to minimize demands for exertion or work, a principle sometimes referred to as the law of less work. The data supporting this idea pertain almost entirely to demands for physical effort. However, the same minimization principle has often been assumed also to apply to cognitive demand. The authors set out to evaluate the validity of this assumption. In 6 behavioral experiments, participants chose freely between courses of action associated with different levels of demand for controlled information processing. Together, the results of these experiments revealed a bias in favor of the less demanding course of action. The bias was obtained across a range of choice settings and demand manipulations and was not wholly attributable to strategic avoidance of errors, minimization of time on task, or maximization of the rate of goal achievement. It is remarkable that the effect also did not depend on awareness of the demand manipulation. Consistent with a motivational account, avoidance of demand displayed sensitivity to task incentives and covaried with individual differences in the efficacy of executive control. The findings reported, together with convergent neuroscientific evidence, lend support to the idea that anticipated cognitive demand plays a significant role in behavioral decision making.
行为和经济理论长期以来一直认为，人们会选择行动，以将付出的努力或工作量最小化，这一原则有时被称为省力法则。支持这一观点的数据几乎完全涉及体力劳动的需求。然而，同样的最小化原则也经常被假定适用于认知需求。作者着手评估这一假设的有效性。在 6 项行为实验中，参与者可以自由选择与受控信息处理需求水平不同的行动方案。这些实验的结果共同揭示了人们倾向于选择要求较低的行动方案。这种偏差在一系列选择情境和需求操作中都存在，不能完全归因于策略性地避免错误、减少任务时间或最大化目标达成率。值得注意的是，这种效应也不依赖于对需求操作的意识。与动机解释一致的是，对需求的回避表现出对任务激励的敏感性，并且与执行控制效率的个体差异相关。报告的研究结果与趋同的神经科学证据一起，为预期认知需求在行为决策中发挥重要作用的观点提供了支持。
