If you’ve ever felt like it “hurts to think,” you might be onto something.
A new study published in the journal Psychological Bulletin suggests that mental effort is often associated with unpleasant feelings, and this is a common experience across different tasks and populations.
The research, led by Erik Bijleveld, Ph.D., from Radboud University, explored how people generally feel when they engage in mentally challenging activities.
“Managers often encourage employees, and teachers often encourage students to exert mental effort,” Bijleveld explained.
“On the surface, this seems to work well: Employees and students do often opt for mentally challenging activities. But our results suggest that people generally dislike mental effort.”
To reach this conclusion, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 170 studies published between 2019 and 2020, involving 4,670 participants from 29 countries.
The participants included a diverse group of people, such as healthcare workers, military personnel, athletes, and college students.
The studies examined a wide range of cognitive tasks, from learning new technologies to playing virtual reality games.
In each study, participants were asked to report how much mental effort they exerted and whether they experienced any unpleasant feelings, such as frustration, irritation, stress, or annoyance, while doing so.
The findings were clear: across all tasks and populations, the more mental effort people put in, the more unpleasant they felt.
“Our findings show that mental effort feels unpleasant across a wide range of populations and tasks,” Bijleveld said. This insight is important for professionals like educators, engineers, and app developers. When designing tasks or tools that require significant mental effort, it’s crucial to support or reward people for their efforts to help mitigate these unpleasant feelings.
Interestingly, the study also found that the connection between mental effort and unpleasant feelings was less pronounced in Asian countries compared to Europe and North America. Bijleveld explained that this could be due to differences in educational practices.
In many Asian countries, students spend more time on schoolwork, which might help them build a higher tolerance for mental exertion from an early age.
Despite the discomfort associated with mental effort, people still voluntarily engage in challenging tasks. For example, millions of people play chess, a game that requires significant mental effort.
Bijleveld suggests that people may choose mentally challenging activities not because they enjoy the effort itself, but because they expect a reward or benefit, such as the satisfaction of mastering a game like chess.
“People may learn that exerting mental effort in some activities leads to rewards,” Bijleveld said. “So while people might choose to engage in mentally demanding activities, it doesn’t necessarily mean they enjoy the mental effort itself. They might be doing it for the rewards that come with it, despite the discomfort.”
This study sheds light on why mental tasks can feel unpleasant and highlights the importance of recognizing and addressing this discomfort in various settings.
If you care about mental health, please read studies about how dairy foods may influence depression risk, and 6 foods you can eat to improve mental health.
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