Perception and Cognition Group, European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen (a Joint Initiative of the University Medical Center Göttingen and the Max-Planck-Society), Göttingen, Germany.
Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 5;10(1):1868. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-58686-0.
Estimating invested effort is a core dimension for evaluating own and others' actions, and views on the relationship between effort and rewards are deeply ingrained in various societal attitudes. Internal representations of effort, however, are inherently noisy, e.g. due to the variability of sensorimotor and visceral responses to physical exertion. The uncertainty in effort judgments is further aggravated when there is no direct access to the internal representations of exertion - such as when estimating the effort of another person. Bayesian cue integration suggests that this uncertainty can be resolved by incorporating additional cues that are predictive of effort, e.g. received rewards. We hypothesized that judgments about the effort spent on a task will be influenced by the magnitude of received rewards. Additionally, we surmised that such influence might further depend on individual beliefs regarding the relationship between hard work and prosperity, as exemplified by a conservative work ethic. To test these predictions, participants performed an effortful task interleaved with a partner and were informed about the obtained reward before rating either their own or the partner's effort. We show that higher rewards led to higher estimations of exerted effort in self-judgments, and this effect was even more pronounced for other-judgments. In both types of judgment, computational modelling revealed that reward information and sensorimotor markers of exertion were combined in a Bayes-optimal manner in order to reduce uncertainty. Remarkably, the extent to which rewards influenced effort judgments was associated with conservative world-views, indicating links between this phenomenon and general beliefs about the relationship between effort and earnings in society.
估计投入的努力是评估自己和他人行为的核心维度，而对努力与回报之间关系的看法深深植根于各种社会态度中。然而，努力的内部表现本质上是嘈杂的，例如由于体力活动的感觉运动和内脏反应的可变性。当无法直接访问努力的内部表现时，例如当估计另一个人的努力时，努力判断的不确定性会进一步加剧。贝叶斯线索整合表明，这种不确定性可以通过整合额外的线索来解决，这些线索可以预测努力，例如收到的奖励。我们假设，对完成任务所花费的努力的判断将受到所获得奖励的大小的影响。此外，我们推测，这种影响可能进一步取决于个人对努力工作与繁荣之间关系的信念，例如保守的职业道德。为了检验这些预测，参与者在执行一项费力的任务时与搭档交替进行，并在对自己或搭档的努力进行评分之前，了解获得的奖励。我们发现，更高的奖励会导致自我判断中更高的努力估计，而对他人的判断则更为明显。在这两种类型的判断中，计算模型都表明，奖励信息和努力的感觉运动标记以贝叶斯最优的方式结合在一起，以减少不确定性。值得注意的是，奖励对努力判断的影响程度与保守的世界观有关，这表明这种现象与社会中关于努力与收益之间关系的一般信念有关。
