The Moralization of Effort
We have a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on the Moralization of Effort. The research is led by recent UCI PhD graduate Jared Celniker. Eight studies, across multiple countries and domains, show that people find the expenditure of effort morally good, even if the effort produces nothing of value.
This is a sensible heuristic at the individual, interpersonal level. But when scaled up to the societal level, the instinct for valuing effort for its own sake has enabled a perverse work environment.
You can read a freely available pre-print of paper here and can find the official journal version of the paper here.
The abstract is appended below.
Abstract
People believe that effort is valuable, but what kind of value does it confer? We find that displays of effort signal moral character. Eight studies (N = 5,502) demonstrate the nature of these effects in the domains of paid employment, personal fitness, and charitable fundraising. The exertion of effort is deemed morally admirable (Studies 1–6) and is monetarily rewarded (Studies 2–6), even in situations where effort does not directly generate additional product, quality, or economic value. Convergent patterns of results emerged in South Korean and French cross-cultural replications (Studies 2b and 2c). We contend that the seeming irrationality of valuing effort for its own sake, such as in situations where one’s efforts do not directly increase economic output (Studies 3–6), reveals a “deeply rational” social heuristic for evaluating potential cooperation partners. Specifically, effort cues engender broad moral trait ascriptions, and this moralization of effort influences donation behaviors (Study 5) and cooperative partner choice decision-making (Studies 4 and 6). In situating our account of effort moralization into past research and theorizing, we also consider the implications of these effects for social welfare policy and the future of work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)