The experience of cognitive conflict is intrinsically rewarding.
The co-activation of two incompatible responses leads to the experience of cognitive conflict, which is thought to be aversive and hence, generally avoided. Consequently, previous research has often rewarded participants monetarily for engaging in cognitive conflict. In contrast, here, across two ex...
| Publicado en: | Communications Psychology Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 1 - 15 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | equations & formulas research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
5/6/2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=195286021&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 195286021 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 27319121 N51Q jtl: Communications Psychology issn: 27319121 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 5/6/2026 vid: 4 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 195286021 195286021 195286021 10.1038/s44271-026-00462-3 195286021 ppf: 1 ppct: 14 formats: tig: atl: The experience of cognitive conflict is intrinsically rewarding. aug: au: La Pietra, Marta Vives, Marc-Lluís Molinaro, Nicola Ruzzoli, Manuela affil: https://ror.org/01a28zg77 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain sug: subj: Cognitive Dissonance Evaluation Conflict (Psychology) Evaluation Neuropsychological Tests Task Performance and Analysis Emotions Evaluation Patient Attitudes Evaluation Human Male Female Adult Experimental Studies Spanish Persons Psychosocial Factors Questionnaires Scales Descriptive Statistics Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance Chi Square Test T-Tests Data Analysis Software Funding Source Adult: 19-44 years Male Female ab: The co-activation of two incompatible responses leads to the experience of cognitive conflict, which is thought to be aversive and hence, generally avoided. Consequently, previous research has often rewarded participants monetarily for engaging in cognitive conflict. In contrast, here, across two experiments (N = 100 each), participants freely chose the level of cognitive conflict they wanted to engage in the Simon (experiment 1) and Stroop tasks (experiment 2) with no external reward. In both experiments, we found that participants chose to freely engage with cognitive conflict, evaluated it as effortful yet enjoyable, and reported feeling surprised and enthusiastic after experiencing high cognitive conflict. Overall, these findings suggest that cognitive conflict is valued and can function as an intrinsic reward, despite the effort associated with it. These results broaden the neuroeconomic approach to cognitive control theories by integrating a hedonic perspective on the subjective experience of cognitive conflict. Across two online experiments (N = 200), we show that people freely choose to engage in cognitive conflict (Simon and Stroop tasks) without external rewards. Perceived as effortful yet enjoyable, cognitive conflict acts as an intrinsic reward. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: equations & formulas research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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