Research

Challenging the Law of Least Effort

A core assumption in psychology and behavioral economics holds that people naturally gravitate toward the path of least resistance — a principle known as the "law of least effort." Our research challenges this view. For example, in a series of laboratory and online studies, we demonstrated that when rewards are made contingent on cognitive effort, effort itself acquires intrinsic value: people subsequently seek out harder tasks, even when no reward is on offer. Crucially, this shift is not merely behavioral. Participants also showed more positive facial muscle responses after exerting effort, suggesting that learning history can fundamentally reshape how effort feels. Together, these findings indicate that the human relationship with effort is far more flexible than traditionally assumed, and that under the right conditions, effort can become something people genuinely want.

Lay Beliefs About Motivation and Self-Control

A second major line of research in our lab examines how people's everyday beliefs about motivation shape their behavior — often functioning as self-fulfilling prophecies. We have shown that beliefs about willpower (whether it is a limited or non-limited resource) influence not only self-control performance but also whether people seek out or avoid effortful tasks in the first place. Complementing this, we have developed and validated a measure of "effort enjoyment beliefs" (people's lay theories about whether effort is inherently pleasant or aversive) and shown that these beliefs predict task difficulty preferences, cardiovascular markers of effort investment, and real-world academic outcomes. Beyond the individual level, our research has linked willpower beliefs to relationship quality and social support in couples, pro-environmental behavior, and cross-national differences in burnout and health. We have further extended this framework to broader worldview beliefs, showing that whether people see the world as fixed or malleable predicts how they respond to large-scale challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and environmental problems. Taken together, this body of work highlights lay beliefs as a powerful and underappreciated lever shaping motivation, coping, and well-being across diverse life domains.

Social Identity and Wise Interventions

A third line of research in our lab examines how social identities shape goal pursuit and how targeted "wise interventions" can reduce inequality in life outcomes. One focus is on first-generation university students, where we have identified a novel mechanism behind their academic disadvantage: these students tend to perceive themselves as less intellectually talented than their peers (independent of actual performance) and this self-perception undermines their motivation and engagement. This effect is particularly pronounced for female first-generation students, who carry two intellectually stigmatized identities simultaneously. Importantly, we show that effort-focused environments can help counteract these dynamics. In a second strand of this work, we develop and test identity-reframing interventions that challenge stigmatizing narratives, for instance, framing refugees or first-generation students not as deficient, but as resilient individuals who have demonstrated real strength in the face of adversity. Tested in large randomized controlled field trials, these interventions have shown meaningful real-world effects, including improved grades over a full semester among first-generation students and better goal progress among people with depression. Together, this research demonstrates that brief, psychologically informed interventions targeting how people see themselves can have lasting consequences for motivation, achievement, and well-being.