Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand.

TLDR

Behavioral and economic theories posit that actions are chosen to minimize exertion or work, a principle known as the law of less work, and while evidence mainly concerns physical effort, this minimization principle has also been assumed to apply to cognitive demand. The authors aimed to test whether the assumption that people avoid cognitive demand holds true. They conducted six behavioral experiments in which participants freely chose between actions with differing levels of controlled information processing demand. Across diverse choice settings and demand manipulations, participants consistently preferred the less demanding option, a bias that persisted regardless of error avoidance, time on task, or goal achievement, was independent of awareness, varied with task incentives, correlated with executive control efficacy, and is supported by convergent neuroscientific evidence, indicating that anticipated cognitive demand significantly influences decision making.

Abstract

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.