If somebody complains that it hurts to think, they may be onto something, as mental exertion appears to be associated with unpleasant feelings in many situations, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. "Managers often encourage employees, and teachers often encourage students, to exert mental effort. On the surface, this seems to work well: Employees and students do often opt for mentally challenging activities," said senior author Erik Bijleveld, PhD, of Radboud University.
"From this, you may be tempted to conclude that employees and students tend to enjoy thinking hard. Our results suggest that this conclusion would be false: In general, people really dislike mental effort." The research was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin .
Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 170 studies, published between 2019 and 2020 and comprising 4,670 participants, to examine how people generally experience mental effort. They did so by testing whether mental effort is associated with unpleasant feelings and whether that association depends on the task or the population involved. The studies used a variety of participants (e.
g., health care employees, military employees, amateur athletes, college students) from 29 countries and involved 358 different cognitive tasks (e.g.
, learning a new technology, finding one's way around an unfamiliar environment, practicing golf swings, playing a virtual reality game). In all studies analyzed, participants.