The effect of effort on the attractiveness of rewarded and unrewarded stimuli.

Aronson, Elliot

doi:10.1037/h0046890

Cited by 62 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…One such bias is the sunkcost fallacy, an economic error in which willingness to continue pursuit of an option is influenced by past investment in that option, rather than anticipated future returns (36,37). In economic terms, considering sunk costs is irrational, as investments committed to a course of action cannot be recovered.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective costs drive overly patient foraging strategies in rats on an intertemporal foraging task

Wikenheiser¹,

Stephens

Redish

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

110

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Laboratory studies of decision making often take the form of twoalternative, forced-choice paradigms. In natural settings, however, many decision problems arise as stay/go choices. We designed a foraging task to test intertemporal decision making in rats via stay/go decisions. Subjects did not follow the rate-maximizing strategy of choosing only food items associated with short delays. Instead, rats were often willing to wait for surprisingly long periods, and consequently earned a lower rate of food intake than they might have by ignoring long-delay options. We tested whether foraging theory or delay discounting models predicted the behavior we observed but found that these models could not account for the strategies subjects selected. Subjects' behavior was well accounted for by a model that incorporated a cost for rejecting potential food items. Interestingly, subjects' cost sensitivity was proportional to environmental richness. These findings are at odds with traditional normative accounts of decision making but are consistent with retrospective considerations having a deleterious influence on decisions (as in the "sunk-cost" effect). More broadly, these findings highlight the utility of complementing existing assays of decision making with tasks that mimic more natural decision topologies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective costs drive overly patient foraging strategies in rats on an intertemporal foraging task

Wikenheiser¹,

Stephens

Redish

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

110

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the transformation path, an activity might become interesting as a result of a transformation of the reasons for doing the activity. We saw earlier, for instance, how cognitive dissonance processes can lead people to experience a task as interesting when they exert effort for no obvious reason (Aronson, 1960;Weick, 1964). Finally, Berlyne's collative variables refer to the stimulus properties that arouse interest (Berlyne, 1960(Berlyne, , 1971Nunnally & Lemond, 1973).…”

Section: An Integrated Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingness can thus result from participating in tediousness. Another experiment had people fish for flashlights containing money or no money (Aronson, 1960). The fishing task was either very easy or quite difficult.…”

Section: Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In summary, investing in an activity (Aronson & Mills, 1959;Gerard & Mathewson, 1966) and lacking external incentives (Aronson, 1960;Weick, 1964) can lead people to experience an activity object as more interesting. Cognitive dissonance can thus be viewed as a transformational mechanism that reconfigures the influence of external incentives on intrinsic motivation.…”

Section: Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interest and Interests: The Psychology of Constructive Capriciousness

Silvia

2001

Review of General Psychology

149

101

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The abiding interest that sustains scientific research has only rarely been displaced onto interest itself. What little research there is, however, has pursued one of two parallel paths. The first path is the study of interest as a transient affective state. Emotion psychology-this path's primary traveler-has historically viewed interest as the black sheep in the flock of basic emotions. The -prototypical‖ negative emotions such as anger and fear have received the lion's share of research, leaving interest and the other positive emotions in relative obscurity (Fredrickson, 1998). But mere neglect aside, many venerable shepherds have kicked interest out of the flock entirely. Interest isn't included in many major emotion theories, beginning with Darwin (1872/1998) and continuing with contemporary models

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“…The empirical results presented above help one understand a variety of non-common-sense phenomena that can be explained by dissonance theory. For example, the predictions of the theory can explain why dissonance reduction is stronger under conditions of low punishment than of high punishment (forbidden toy paradigm, Aronson & Carlsmith, 1963), why attitude change is stronger under conditions of low reward than of high reward (the $1/$20 experiment by Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959), and why the attractiveness of a decision alternative or standpoint increases with the extent to which a person has previously invested in this decision or standpoint (escalation of commitment, Aronson, 1961).…”

Section: Classic Formulation Of Dissonance Theorymentioning

confidence: 98%

The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: State of the Science and Directions for Future Research

Fischer

Frey²,

Peus³

et al. 2008

Knowledge and Space

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The theory of cognitive dissonance is one of the most influential theories in social psychology. Since its initial publication 50 years ago, it has inspired more than 1,000 empirical papers. However, dissonance theory has not only had a profound impact on research in social psychology, it has also been used for designing interventions to address a variety of societal problems. In this short overview of the empirical literature on dissonance theory, we first introduce the definition of dissonance theory in its classic formulation by Festinger (1957). Second, we review the most important paradigms used in empirical dissonance research and summarize the most prominent empirical results. Third, we present the main features of the self-based revision of dissonance theory and introduce our own self-based modification of dissonance theory including related data on ego-depletion and selective exposure. Finally, we present directions for future dissonance research, in particular in the areas of self-regulation and information-processing, and discuss the application of dissonance theory to societal problems. Classic Formulation of Dissonance TheoryCognitive dissonance is defined as the subjective perception of incompatibility between two self-relevant cognitions. A cognition can be any element of knowledge, belief, attitude, value, emotion, interest, plan, or behavior. In other words, cognitions are dissonant when one specific cognition implies the opposite of another cognition. The resulting cognitive discrepancy is associated with a psychological state of unpleasantness (cognitive dissonance) that motivates the individual to reduce this state of discomfort by reducing the discrepancy between the dissonant cognitions (Festinger, 1957;Harmon-Jones, 2000). The magnitude of the cognitive dissonance is determined by the importance of the cognitions involved and their relation to a personal standard. Dissonance can be reduced in five ways or some combination thereof: (a) adding consonant cognitions, (b) subtracting dissonant cognitions (by ignoring, suppressing, or forgetting them), (c) replacing existing cognitions with others, that is, subtracting dissonant cognitions while adding consonant ones, (d) increasing the importance of consonant cognitions, and

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The effect of effort on the attractiveness of rewarded and unrewarded stimuli.

Cited by 62 publications

References 8 publications

Subjective costs drive overly patient foraging strategies in rats on an intertemporal foraging task

Subjective costs drive overly patient foraging strategies in rats on an intertemporal foraging task

Interest and Interests: The Psychology of Constructive Capriciousness

The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: State of the Science and Directions for Future Research

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