Choice and Mental Effort
Cover Image by Ted Erski from Pixabay
By Althea Need Kaminske
Thinking is hard. In general, we don’t like to put forth mental effort when we can avoid it. Further, when we do exert mental effort, we tend to not like it. And yet… there are times when we actually enjoy doing the hard work of thinking through something. There are times when we may even feel we’ve entered into a flow state, where difficult tasks feel relatively effortless (1). How we feel about completing a task appears to be about more than just effort.
One of the factors that can affect how we feel about completing a task is how much choice we had in the matter. A recent study by Wahlers et al. (2025) examined how autonomy (the degree of choice) influences the experience of mental effort while completing a reading comprehension task (2). In the first experiment, students were given brief descriptions of 12 passages and asked to rank them in order of interest. Students then either read the three most interesting passages of their choice (high autonomy), or were given three passages (low autonomy). The students were told that the passages that they were given were chosen at random, but in actuality the researchers chose three of the students least interesting passages. This was a within-subjects design so that half of the participants did the high autonomy condition first, then the low autonomy condition. The other half experienced the conditions in the reverse order with the low autonomy condition first, followed by high autonomy. After each passage the participants filled out a brief questionnaire about the mental effort, mental fatigue, and some reading comprehension questions.
The second experiment was similar to the first, except when students were told to choose passages in the high autonomy condition, they were not instructed to do so based on interest. In addition, the second experiment was run online whereas the first was conducted in person.
In both experiments, when participants chose to read a passage they reported less mental effort and less mental fatigue than when the passage was chosen for them. In the first experiment, which was conducted in person and participants were instructed to choose based on interest, participants had higher reading comprehension scores for passages that they chose compared to those that were chosen for them. However, in the second experiment there was no difference in reading comprehension between the two groups. It’s worth noting, however, that reading comprehension was lower in the second experiment and the authors attributed these lower scores to the absence of a distraction-free environment.
This study has some interesting implications for teaching and learning. Previous research has shown that an autonomy-supportive instructional style can improve the competence and enjoyment of students (3). This study provides evidence that giving students autonomy in their reading helps them to overcome barriers like perceived mental effort and mental fatigue. This has the potential to create a positive-feedback mechanism wherein students find certain material or tasks to be relatively more enjoyable than others, making it more likely that they’ll choose to interact with those again in the future. When students have a degree of choice - autonomy - in their learning, it creates a more positive learning experience.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S., Nakamura, J. (2014). Flow. In M. Csikszentmihalyi (Ed.), Flow and the foundations of positive psychology (pp. 227-238) Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_15
Wahlers, J. N., Garrison, K. E., Akin, K. (2025). Autonomy Influences the Subjective Experience of Mental Effort During a Reading Comprehension Task. Motivation Science, 11(3), 306-321. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000380
Black, A. E., & Deci, E. L. (2000). The effects of instructor’s autonomy support and students’ autonomous motivation on learning organic chemistry: A self-determination theory perspective. Science Education, 84(6), 740-756. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-237X(200011)84:6<740::AID-SCE4>3.0.CO;2-3
