Effort as assessed by motivational arousal in identity-relevant tasks

A laboratory experiment investigated effort expenditure in an identity-relevant task. This research was guided by the hypothesis that high identity relevance per se does not automatically result in high effort. Extending J. W. Brehm's energization theory (Brehm, Wright, Solomon, Silka, & Greenberg, 1983), I predicted that high effort should be mobilized only if the task is high in both identity relevance and difficulty. This hypothesis was tested in a 2 x 2 factorial design in which identity relevance (relevant vs. irrelevant) and difficulty (easy vs. difficult) of a memory task were manipulated. The dependent variable, effort expenditure, was measured using physiological data (reactivity of heart rate and systolic blood pressure). These measures indicated, as expected, high effort expenditure only under the condition of an identity-relevant + difficult task, whereas the participants in all other conditions expended significantly less effort. By contrast, the analysis yielded no effects on self-reported activation and feeling states.