If It's Hard to Read, It's Hard to Do

How people estimate the effort involved in a novel behavior is unknown, but one possibility is that people run a mental simulation of the behavior and infer effort from the simulation.

Abstract

People are more likely to engage in a given behavior the less effort it requires. As numerous studies have indicated, high perceived effort is a major impediment to behavior change, from adopting an exercise routine (e.g., DuCharme & Brawley, 1995) to changing one's diet (e.g., Sparks, Guthrie, & Shepherd, 1997). Although previous research has shown that task type (e.g., Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994) and previous experience (e.g., Thomas, Handley, & Newstand, 2007) influence the accuracy of effort predictions, little is known about how people estimate the effort involved in a novel behavior. One possibility is that people run a mental simulation of the behavior and infer effort from the