Understanding the effort paradox can help you reshape your relationship to exertion so that you commit to those hard but truly meaningful activities

“On the one hand, effort is costly,” says Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, Canada. “On the other hand, it looks like we tend to value those things that we exerted effort for.” In a seminal 2018 paper, he and his colleagues dubbed this apparent conflict the “effort paradox”. Since then, psychologists have been figuring out the origins of the effort paradox and why some of us struggle with tasks that others might find easy. What they are finding is offering fresh insights not only into how you can get off the couch and into your running shoes, but also how you can learn more effectively, better empathise with others and even cultivate a more meaningful life. “[It seems] that if we can become…

A Psychologist Debunks The Single Greatest Myth About Marijuana

…This isn’t a relic of a bygone era. The idea that marijuana makes you lazy has been a recurring theme in anti-drug campaigns and remains a widely held belief. Many people still view cannabis users as unmotivated slackers, content to waste their days in a haze of smoke. But is this really true? According to recent research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, it may be little more than a myth.

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Bored? Scientists say mindless scrolling through online videos makes it worse

Researchers conducted experiments to investigate the psychological effects of flicking by and fast-forwarding through online videos during moments of downtime
Scrolling through videos on TikTok or YouTube to avert boredom may have a decidedly unintended consequence: It can make people feel more bored, according to the paradoxical findings of a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. People seem increasingly intolerant of it, and Michael Inzlicht has a counterintuitive tip for avoiding boredom: Lean into it. Sit with the discomfort of boredom for a bit before flitting to something else. “If we’re so addicted to escaping boredom, so intolerant of boredom, it would be like a foraging animal going tree to tree, but never searching long enough to see if it bears fruit,” Inzlicht said. “Eventually, that animal will die.”

Joshua Aronson, New York University
Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University
Elliot Berkman, University of Oregon
Kirk Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University
Daryl Cameron, Penn State University
Belle Derks, Utrecht University
Jennifer Gutsell, Brandeis University
Greg Hajcak, Florida State University
Eddie Harmon-Jones, University of New South Wales
Jacob Hirsh, University of Toronto
Cendri Hutcherson, University of Toronto
Sonia Kang, University of Toronto
Michael Larson, Brigham Young University
Lisa Legault, Clarkson University
Ian McGregor, University of Waterloo
Marina Milyavskaya, Carleton University
Sukhvinder Obhi, McMaster University
Liz Page-Gould, University of Toronto
Travis Proulx, Cardiff University
Blair Saunders, University of Dundee
Brandon Schmeichel, Texas A&M University
Zindel Segal, University of Toronto
Alexa Tullett, University of Alabama

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