We offer thoughts pertaining to purported conceptual and replication crises that have been discussed in relation to the limited-resource model (LRM) of self-control, functioning as crisis outsiders who have been conducting related research concerned with determinants and cardiovascular correlates of effort. Guiding analyses in our laboratory convey important lessons about experimental generation of the now-classic LRM self-regulatory-fatigue effect on control. They do so by drawing attention to conditions that must be met in fatigue-induction and fatigue-influence phases of relevant experiments. One fundamental lesson is that even highly standardized fatigue-induction protocols cannot be expected to consistently allow definitive tests of this effect. Another is that the effect might emerge consistently only in a behavioral-restraint “sweet spot” of sorts—a multidimensional motivational space wherein rested study participants view restraint as possible and worthwhile and fatigued participants do not. Implications are identified and discussed.

This article addresses recent controversy surrounding the limited resource model of self-control developed by Baumeister and colleagues. It does so focusing on certain concerns that have been raised and drawing from an emerging analysis of fatigue influence on behavioral restraint that is guiding current research in our laboratory. The concerns pertain to elements of the relevant research literature that present an uncertain fit with one of the model’s key propositions, regarding performance resource depletion—that is, fatigue—influence on inhibitory strength and control. They have led some investigators to question the proposition, suggesting that related control findings might have been generated by a mechanism or set of mechanisms alternative to fatigue. Our emerging analysis of fatigue influence goes against this grain. It suggests that the fatigue proposition remains viable but could benefit from informed elaboration regarding the role fatigue plays in determining how intensively people resist unwanted behavioral urges. In light of the analysis, the literature elements of concern are not only understandable, but to be expected.

Current models of mental effort in psychology, behavioral economics, and cognitive neuroscience typically suggest that exerting cognitive effort is aversive, and people avoid it whenever possible. The aim of this research was to challenge this view and show that people can learn to value and seek effort intrinsically. Our experiments tested the hypothesis that effort-contingent reward in a working-memory task will induce a preference for more demanding math tasks in a transfer phase, even though participants were aware that they would no longer receive any reward for task performance. In laboratory Experiment 1 (n = 121), we made reward directly contingent on mobilized cognitive effort as assessed via cardiovascular measures (β-adrenergic sympathetic activity) during the training task. Experiments 2a to 2e (n = 1,457) were conducted online to examine whether the effects of effort-contingent reward on subsequent demand seeking replicate and generalize to community samples. Taken together, the studies yielded reliable evidence that effort-contingent reward increased participants’ demand seeking and preference for the exertion of cognitive effort on the transfer task. Our findings provide evidence that people can learn to assign positive value to mental effort. The results challenge currently dominant theories of mental effort and provide evidence and an explanation for the positive effects of environments appreciating effort and individual growth on people’s evaluation of effort and their willingness to mobilize effort and approach challenging tasks.

Participants were presented a task relevant to their identity after having been exposed to a prime that made mortality more or less salient. For half, difficulty was fixed at a low level; for the rest, difficulty was unfixed. Blending logic from terror management theory (TMT) and an analysis concerned with determinants and cardiovascular (CV) correlates of effort, we predicted that effort and associated CV responses would be (a) greater under high salience conditions when the challenge was unfixed, but (b) low regardless of salience when the challenge was fixed. Findings for systolic blood pressure (SBP) confirmed this, with responses for heart rate (HR), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and mean arterial pressure (MAP) following. Results document uniquely a key TMT implication. They also tell us how mortality reminders should affect existential striving and suggest that existential terror should affect CV responses indirectly by affecting striving.

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