More Done, More Drained: Being Further Along in a Mundane Experience Feels Worse.
Life is full of mundane tasks such as commuting, attending meetings, and filing paperwork. Despite their ubiquity, experience with mundane tasks remains understudied in the literature. Across a series of lab and field studies, we show that the negative feelings about a mundane experience are impacte...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Personality & Social Psychology Vol. 129; no. 2; pp. 244 - 266 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
American Psychological Association
Aug2025
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=186508345&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 186508345 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00223514 JSS jtl: Journal of Personality & Social Psychology issn: 00223514 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2025 vid: 129 iid: 2 pid: 34 pub: American Psychological Association artinfo: ui: 186508345 10.1037/pspa0000446 ppf: 244 ppct: 22 formats: tig: atl: More Done, More Drained: Being Further Along in a Mundane Experience Feels Worse. aug: au: Zeng, Ying Tsai Jan, Claire Zhao, Min Robitaille, Nicole affil: Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto Carroll School of Management, Boston College Smith School of Business, Queen's University su: Affect (Psychology) Mood (Psychology) Distraction Attention Cognitive bias Task analysis Chores sug: subj: Affect (Psychology) Mood (Psychology) Distraction Attention Cognitive bias Task analysis Chores keyword: field experiment mundane task negative experience ratio sensitivity field experiment mundane task negative experience ratio sensitivity ab: Life is full of mundane tasks such as commuting, attending meetings, and filing paperwork. Despite their ubiquity, experience with mundane tasks remains understudied in the literature. Across a series of lab and field studies, we show that the negative feelings about a mundane experience are impacted by people's perception of how much of the task has been completed, which we term relative task completion. Contrary to people's intuition, we find that the same ongoing task (e.g., sitting through a boring meeting for 20 min) feels less aversive when relative completion is lower (e.g., in a 60-min meeting) than when it is higher (e.g., in a 30-min meeting). Our studies suggest this may occur due to ratio sensitivity: People infer that they have endured less after completing a smaller, rather than a larger, proportion of a mundane task, which reduces negative feelings. Data also showed that people lack insight into the impact of relative task completion and ruled out alternative explanations including response scale anchoring, progress focus, and preparation while suggesting mood regulation and attention as parallel explanations in some contexts. Finally, we identify busyness as a moderator and develop three low-cost interventions to manipulate perceived relative task completion and improve mundane experiences. Statement of Limitations: Our research examined how relative completion affects mundane experiences, across a wide variety of tasks in lab and field settings. Our studies mainly measured self-reported experiences though also included unrelated incentive-compatible decisions in Study 2 and behavioral tendencies in Study 4. In four studies, we provided preliminary evidence for the proposed underlying mechanism—ratio thinking; this mechanism is worth further investigation using additional behavioral measures in field settings. Our core effect on mundane experiences had reasonable statistical power and should be reproducible across equivalent samples and tasks in the near future. Other demographic groups may not exhibit the same effects of relative completion due to differences in what they consider mundane tasks, their coping strategies, or their busyness level. Evolving social conditions might also lead to differences in the long run. In addition, we expect a weaker or even null effect for positive experiences if hedonic adaptation dominates, and when the length of a task is highly evaluable (e.g., the amount of sleep) according to our Supplemental Studies and the proposed ratio sensitivity mechanism, respectively. Moreover, our theory does not apply to contexts where relative completion information is hard to acquire (e.g., without a clear total task length due to an evolving or undefined endpoint) or when the experience involves high stakes or is overwhelming from beginning to end (no variance throughout the negative episode; e.g., childbirth). These possible boundary conditions are beyond the scope of the current research but deserve future research attention. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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