An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance
Kurzban and colleagues ask why mentally effortful tasks feel aversive and why performance then declines. They propose an alternative to the view that a physical resource is depleted: that the felt sense of effort is the output of cost and benefit computations, including the opportunity cost of deploying executive systems that can serve only a limited number of tasks at once. That experience then motivates reduced deployment of those systems. The paper reviews rival explanations and the relevant evidence across psychology and neuroscience, and sets out ways the models could be told apart empirically.
Kurzban and colleagues ask why mentally effortful tasks feel aversive and why performance then declines. They propose an alternative to the view that a physical resource is depleted: that the felt sense of effort is the output of cost and benefit computations, including the opportunity cost of deploying executive systems that can serve only a limited number of tasks at once. That experience then motivates reduced deployment of those systems. The paper reviews rival explanations and the relevant evidence across psychology and neuroscience, and sets out ways the models could be told apart empirically.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-25 via OpenAlex.
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Kurzban, R., Duckworth, A., Kable, J. W., & Myers, J. (2013). An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(6), 661-679. doi:10.1017/S0140525X12003196