Is mental effort exertion contagious?

Abstract

The presence of another person can influence task performance. What is, however, still unclear is whether performance also depends on what this other person is doing. In two experiments, two participants (A and B) jointly performed a Simon task, and we selectively manipulated the difficulty of the task for participant A only. This was achieved by presenting A with 90% congruent trials (creating an easy task requiring low effort investment) or 10% congruent trials (creating a difficult task requiring high effort investment). Although this manipulation is irrelevant for the task of participant B, we nevertheless observed that B exerted more mental effort when participant A performed the difficult version of the task, compared to the easy version. Crucially, in Experiment 2 this was found to be the case even when participants could not see each other's stimuli. These results provide a first compelling demonstration that the exertion of effort is contagious.

Co-representation of others’ task constraints in joint action.

“…Hence, the unconstrained actor’s modulation of movement height in response to the coactor’s obstacle may be interpreted as an expression of the co-represented cognitive effort. However, whereas Desender et al (2016) used an interference task where response times reflect cognitive effort, our dependent variable of movement height provides a measure of movement effort that is not necessarily related to cognitive effort.…”

Being Alone with Others: A Unique Form of Social Contact and Its Impact on Momentary Positive Affect

“…First, it would be vital to check whether performing the same task simultaneously with another person leads to similar outcomes, i.e. better cognitive abilities (Desender et al, 2016, Eskenazi et al, 2013Shteynberg, 2010) or stronger sensory sensations (Boothby et al, 2014), and whether those results are different depending on the familiarity levels of co-experiencers. Second, only after consistently obtaining such results, we could start assessing whether the shared attention theory can actually explain those findings.…”

“…The results indicated that participants exerted more effort when their partners were performing a hard task, compared to when their partners were performing an easy task. This finding suggested that the cognitive efforts exerted by someone performing a task could influence the cognitive efforts of others present in the same physical space and performing similar tasks (Desender et al, 2016). Further studies have shown that across a variety of tasks studied, when participants performed a task at the same time as others, their performance was superior compared to when they performed the same task alone.…”

“…Hence, the fourth explanation for amplification of emotions stems from the idea that when people are together, they experience not only higher sense of belonging, but also amplification of experienced emotions. Recent research has shown that when people were placed in a room with others, who performed the same tasks as them, they experienced improvements in their recall memory (Eskenazi, Doerrfeld, Logan, Knoblich, & Sebanz, 2013;He, Lever, & Humphreys, 2011;, greater goal pursuit (Walton, Cohen, Cwir, & Spencer, 2012), greater cognitive efforts (Desender, Beurms, & Van den Bussche, 2016), and an amplification of sensory sensations (Boothby, Clark, & Bargh, 2014) and heightened experienced emotions (Shteynberg et al, 2014), compared to performing those tasks while alone. Shteynberg and collaborators (2014) claimed that the outcomes obtained by all the shared task studies were results of the shared attention emerging during the performance of those tasks.…”

“…For example, when someone suddenly looks at the sky, others are likely to look in that same direction, since ignoring this clue could have a negative consequence for their survival (Friesen & Kingstone, 1998;Friesen, Moor, & Kingstone, 2005;Langton & Bruce, 1999). Similarly, people are naturally predisposed to noticing changes in others' physical states, especially (Desender et al, 2016;Howells, Stein, & Russell, 2010;Smit, Eling, Hopman, & Coenen, 2005), since it could be decisive to their well-being. Shteynberg (2015) proposed that monitoring one's own actions, and actions and emotional states of others, leads to increased arousal and an activation of more cognitive resources, which are manifested in better performance on a task.…”