Influential theories in psychology, neuroscience, and economics assume that the exertion of mental effort should feel aversive. Yet, this assumption is usually untested, and it is challenged by casual observations and previous studies. Here, we meta-analyze (a) whether mental effort is generally experienced as aversive and (b) whether the association between mental effort and aversive feelings depends on population and task characteristics. We meta-analyzed a set of 170 studies (from 125 articles published in 2019-2020; 358 different tasks; 4,670 unique subjects). These studies were conducted in a variety of populations (e.g., health care employees, military employees, amateur athletes, college students; data were collected in 29 different countries) and used a variety of tasks (e.g., equipment testing tasks, virtual reality tasks, cognitive performance tasks). Despite this diversity, these studies had one crucial common feature: All used the NASA Task Load Index to examine participants' experiences of effort and negative affect. As expected, we found a strong positive association between mental effort and negative affect. Surprisingly, just one of our 15 moderators had a significant effect (effort felt somewhat less aversive in studies from Asia vs. Europe and North America). Overall, mental effort felt aversive in different types of tasks (e.g., tasks with and without feedback), in different types of populations (e.g., university-educated populations and non-university-educated populations), and on different continents. Supporting theories that conceptualize effort as a cost, we suggest that mental effort is inherently aversive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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思考的不愉快：脑力劳动与负面影响之间关联的元分析回顾。


心理学、神经科学和经济学中颇具影响力的理论认为，脑力劳动的消耗应该让人感到厌恶。然而，这一假设通常未经检验，并且受到随意观察和先前研究的挑战。在这里，我们荟萃分析 （a） 脑力劳动是否通常被认为是厌恶的，以及 （b） 脑力劳动和厌恶情绪之间的关联是否取决于群体和任务特征。我们荟萃分析了一组 170 项研究（来自 2019-2020 年发表的 125 篇文章、358 个不同的任务、4,670 个独特的主题）。这些研究是在不同的人群（例如，医护人员、军队雇员、业余运动员、大学生;数据在 29 个不同的国家收集）中进行的，并使用了各种任务（例如，设备测试任务、虚拟现实任务、认知表现任务）。尽管存在这种差异，但这些研究有一个关键的共同特征：所有研究都使用 NASA 任务负荷指数来检查参与者的努力和负面影响体验。正如预期的那样，我们发现脑力劳动和消极影响之间存在很强的正相关。令人惊讶的是，我们的 15 位主持人中只有一位产生了显著的效果（在亚洲与欧洲和北美的研究中，努力感觉不那么令人厌恶）。总体而言，在不同类型的任务（例如，有反馈和没有反馈的任务）、不同类型的人群（例如，受过大学教育的人群和未受过大学教育的人群）以及不同的大洲中，脑力劳动会让人感到厌恶。支持将努力概念化为成本的理论，我们认为脑力劳动本质上是厌恶的。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。