Effort Norms Encourage More Exertion but Not Less

People are lazy. According to the law of least effort, people generally prefer to exert less ratherthan more effort to achieve the same reward. However, this research often isolates individualsfrom social influences, overlooking the fact that we are inherently social beings whose behaviouris shaped by the norms and information we gather from others. Here, we examine whetherindividuals conform to both high-effort and low-effort norms equally, or whether the strength ofnormative influence on effort choices depends on the direction of the norm. Across twelvestudies (N = 2,084), participants completed a demand-selection task where they repeatedly chosebetween a hard or easy task. While people generally avoid effort, results revealed thatparticipants exerted significantly more effort after learning that previous participants consistentlychose 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 afterincreasing the acceptability of low effort—by enhancing the value of low effort and thepsychological 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' behaviourcan inspire us to work harder, individuals show resistance to lowering their effort below whatthey would typically exert. While we consistently found conformity to high-effort norms, effortpreferences were not influenced when hearing about others completing an unrelated task,pointing to a possible boundary condition for norm effects.