Picture this: you’re cosy at home on an autumnal afternoon in the holidays and you’re faced with a choice.
Option A: read those pedagogy-focused research papers that you’ve been meaning to get to all term.
Option B: rewatch your favourite TV programme.
To most of us, option B may feel mighty tempting. But why?
A recent meta-analysis has confirmed what teachers have long suspected: our brains are wired to avoid mental effort. And the findings from this research offer fascinating insights into why students (and adults) sometimes struggle to engage with challenging cognitive tasks.
As humans, we have a complicated relationship with mental effort. On the one hand, we’re capable of incredible intellectual feats. On the other, we avoid taxing ourselves mentally if we can help it. This is what researchers call the effort paradox.
As a teacher, I’ve witnessed this first-hand many times. I’ve often spent hours creating what I thought were engaging, evidence-informed activities using cognitive science principles, only to be immediately asked by students: “Can’t we just watch a video about it instead?” Their brains, it seems, were instinctively seeking the path of least resistance.
Avoiding mental effort
The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 170 recent studies, analysing data from 358 different tasks, involving 4,670 participants across 29 countries. The findings were clear: across the board mental effort was strongly associated with negative feelings. This held true regardless of the level of education, the age or gender, whether people worked alone or in teams or how well the task matched a person’s skills.
Interestingly, the research revealed cultural differences. Studies conducted in Asia showed a weaker correlation between hard thinking and negative feelings, suggesting cultural variations in how effort is perceived and valued.
So what is happening in our brains? They are, essentially, performing a cost-benefit analysis every time they are faced with a mental task. The cost is the negative feelings associated with mental effort, while the benefit is the outcome or reward of completing the task.
This explains why students might eagerly engage in complex video games for hours but avoid a challenging homework assignment. In the game, the perceived benefits (fun, achievement, social connection) outweigh the mental cost, while for homework the benefits might seem less immediate or tangible.
But what about those students who genuinely seem to love learning? Previous research has identified a trait called “need for cognition”, whereby some people appear to seek out and enjoy mentally demanding activities more than others.
However, this new meta-analysis suggests a more nuanced interpretation. Even for these students, the act of exerting cognitive effort still registers as somewhat unpleasant in the moment. The difference is that they find the overall experience or outcome rewarding enough to outweigh the temporary discomfort.
It can be thought of like exercise. Even fitness enthusiasts don’t necessarily enjoy every moment of a workout. But they value the results enough to push through the temporary discomfort.
So what are the implications for the classroom?
It’s not personal
When students resist challenging tasks, it’s not necessarily because they’re being lazy or don’t like your subject. Their brains are simply following a deeply ingrained pattern of least resistance.
Effort needs to feel worthwhile
Just as we’re more likely to exercise if we enjoy the activity or clearly see its benefits, students need to perceive value in mental effort.
Manageable chunks may be better
Given that sustained mental effort feels costly to the brain, breaking tasks into smaller, manageable chunks could be beneficial.
Celebrate the struggle
Acknowledge that mental effort can feel uncomfortable, but frame it positively by praising the effort and process of learning instead of just the outcome.
Related research has found that there are clear implications for lesson and curriculum planning, too.
Variation
It’s wise to alternate between different types of tasks to maintain engagement and reduce mental fatigue. A 2015 paper found that this approach can leverage the brain’s modality-specific fatigue patterns to improve attention and perhaps performance on subsequent tasks.
Autonomy
Allowing students to make choices in their learning can enhance motivation by fostering a sense of ownership over tasks, researchers have found. By allowing limited selection of topics, methods or formats of assignments, students may show more sustained effort. And when they experience success and growth, they’re more likely to be motivated to continue exerting effort.
Relatedness
Building strong relationships within the classroom, both between peers and with teachers, has been found to help attendance and effort, with students who feel a greater sense of belonging being more likely to attend lessons and invest effort.
Our brains, and our students’ brains, may be programmed to avoid thinking hard. But armed with this knowledge, we can design learning experiences that work with our neurological wiring rather than against it.
By acknowledging the inherent cost of mental effort and finding creative ways to boost its perceived value, we can help students to push through that initial resistance and discover the rewards of cognitive challenges.
Mark Leswell is research lead at Swale Academies Trust
For the latest research, pedagogy and classroom advice, sign up for our weekly Teaching Essentials newsletter
