Think Challenging Tasks “Hurt” Your Brain? You’re About To Be Vindicated

Do you enjoy tasks that make you think really hard? Be honest – you probably don’t. You might do them anyway, but we'd bet it's not always a pleasant experience. A new meta-analysis has looked at many published studies and found that these feelings are not all in your head: exerting mental effort really can feel unpleasant.

We humans can be a contrary bunch. According to the 170 studies the authors analyzed, while we may agree to engage in a range of activities that take mental effort – things like learning to use new technology or practicing our technique in a sport – we generally don’t actually enjoy it that much.

“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,” explained senior author Dr Erik Bijleveld of Radboud University in a statement . “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.”

This had certainly been theorized in the past, but there was a lack of strong data to confirm it. The papers included in the team’s meta-analysis comprised a total of 4,670 participants in a variety of settings, including college students, healthcare workers, and the military. Twenty-seven countries were represented, with participants being asked about 358 different cognitive tasks in total.

No matter the task or group of people being studied, greater mental exertion was associated with greater unpleasantness. In psychologist-speak, mental exertion is “aversive”. It turns out that, as a species , we’re really not fans of thinking hard.

However, it’s also true that tasks requiring mental effort are often unavoidable, whether it’s your boss giving you an assignment at work or your sports coach laying down a training regime. Can the study authors offer any hope of making these tasks easier to bear?

“When people are required to exert substantial mental effort, you need to make sure to support or reward them for their effort,” said Bijleveld. That’s more like it.

“For example, why do millions of people play chess ? People may learn that exerting mental effort in some specific activities is likely to lead to reward. If the benefits of chess outweigh the costs, people may choose to play chess, and even self-report that they enjoy chess,” Bijleveld continued.

The authors suggest that managers, engineers, and teachers should consider this when planning tasks, designing new apps and tech interfaces, or setting schoolwork. It’s fine to ask people to put in some mental effort, but ideally, you should support them and reward them for it too.

An intriguing cultural difference also emerged from the data. While people across all localities universally indicated that thinking hard wasn’t fun, this was less pronounced in studies conducted in Asia than in Europe or North America. The team theorized that this was down to a different educational environment – kids in Asia typically spend more time on schoolwork than their counterparts in Europe or North America, so they may develop greater resilience to mental exertion earlier in life.

The upshot, according to Bijleveld, is that “when people choose to pursue mentally effortful activities, this should not be taken as an indication that they enjoy mental effort per se.”

“Perhaps people choose mentally effortful activities despite the effort, not because of it.”

The study is published in the journal Psychological Bulletin .