People who complain that a difficult problem that requires a lot of thinking and thinking gives them a headache are not exaggerating.
People who complain that a difficult problem that requires a lot of thinking and thinking gives them a headache may not be exaggerating, according to a new study.
Mental effort is often associated with unpleasant feelings, the researchers reported in the journal Psychological Bulletin.
In fact, the more mental effort a person experiences, the more emotions they experience, such as frustration, irritation, anxiety or irritation, the findings showed.
“Our findings show that mental effort is unpleasant for a wide range of populations and tasks,” said lead researcher Erik Bijleveld, an associate professor of psychology at Radboud University in the Netherlands.
“This is important for professionals such as engineers and educators to keep in mind when designing tasks, tools, interfaces, applications, materials, or instruction,” Bijleveld added in a university press release. “When people are required to make significant intellectual effort, you need to make sure you support them or reward them for their effort,” he said.
For the study, researchers analyzed 170 studies involving 4,670 people published between 2019 and 2020.
Participants included people from 29 countries of diverse backgrounds, including health professionals, military personnel, amateur athletes and students.
The studies involved more than 350 different mental tasks, from learning new technology to practicing golf swings or virtual reality games to figuring out how to navigate an unfamiliar environment.
According to the researchers, the overall results suggest that strenuous mental effort can produce unpleasant emotions.
However, the relationship between mental effort and unpleasant emotions varied from place to place and was less pronounced in Asian countries than in Europe or North America, the researchers found.
This could mean that a person’s learning history can influence how mental endeavors affect them, the researchers said.
According to the researchers, high school students in Asia spend more time on schoolwork than students in Europe or North America, and therefore may have learned to cope with higher levels of mental stress earlier.
The researchers said that despite the unpleasantness of the mentally demanding tasks, people still engage in them.
“For example, why do millions of people play chess?” Bijleveld said. “People can learn that mental effort in certain activities can lead to reward. “If the benefits of playing chess outweigh the costs, people may choose to play chess and even tell themselves that they like chess.”
“However, when people choose to engage in intellectually challenging activities, this should not be taken as an indication that they enjoy the intellectual effort,” he said. “Perhaps people choose mentally demanding activities despite the effort required, not because of it.”
Managers and teachers should keep this in mind when pushing others to perform challenging tasks, Bijleveld said: Keep in mind that people generally don’t really want mental effort.