While on vacation this month, I’ll be re-posting some of my earliest posts. This one’s from January 2017.
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Effort Heuristic 1: The more effort you invest in something, the more you value what you hope to achieve through that effort. In other words, the harder you work to achieve a goal, the more you care about the goal. Example: I’ve worked hard to get into this class, so I really want to get a good grade.
Effort Heuristic 2: The more effort you invest in something, the more highly you regard the product of that effort (especially when quality is difficult to ascertain). In other words, if you worked hard to produce something, the product of your effort must be high quality. Example: I worked 20 hours on that paper – it must be worth an ‘A’!
Effort Heuristic 3: The more effort you invest in something, the more likely you will continue investing effort. This heuristic is more likely to be used when there is no clear endpoint to signal a goal has been reached. Sometimes known as the tyranny of past investments. Examples: I’ve worked for years to become head accountant and I’ll be damned if I change careers now (even though I hate accounting!). Or, we’ve been married 20 years - we can’t give up on the relationship now!
The dictionary definition of effort is mental or physical exertion – but that doesn’t tell us much. Because “exertion” is such a nebulous concept, we often consider effort through proxies like time spent, sacrifices made, opportunities turned down, pleasures denied, unpleasantness endured, and money spent. These proxies all implicate some form of emotional, mental, or physical labor – that is, effort.
Reference:
Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz, Leaf Van Boven, and T. William Altermatt. The effort heuristic. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40 (2004) 91–98