Effort norms encourage more exertion but not less.

= 1,957), participants completed a demand selection task where they repeatedly chose between a hard or easy task. While people generally avoid effort, results revealed that participants exerted significantly more effort after learning that previous participants consistently chose the harder task, compared to a control group who received no information about others' choices. Participants who were informed that others typically opted for the easier task, however, did not exert less effort than the control group and in fact exerted more effort. Even after increasing the acceptability of low effort-by enhancing the value of low effort and the psychological closeness to past participants-individuals still opposed the low-effort norm, exerting no less effort than the control group. These findings suggest that while others' behavior can inspire us to work harder, individuals show resistance to lowering their effort below what they would typically exert. While we consistently found conformity to high-effort norms, effort preferences were not influenced when hearing about others completing an unrelated task, pointing to a possible boundary condition for norm effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).