It appears you don't have support to open PDFs in this web browser. To view this file, Open with your PDF reader
Abstract
An important body of literature suggests that exerting intense cognitive effort causes mental fatigue and can lead to unhealthy behaviors such as indulging in high-calorie food and taking drugs. Whereas this effect has been mostly explained in terms of weakening cognitive control, cognitive effort may also bias behavioral choices by amplifying the hedonic and emotional impact of rewards. We report parallel findings with animals and humans supporting this hypothesis. In rats, exerting cognitive effort immediately before access to cocaine self-administration significantly increased drug intake. In addition, exerting cognitive effort increased the psychostimulant effect of cocaine. The effects of cognitive effort on addiction-related behaviors were eliminated and even reversed when animals could rest in their home-cage for 2–4 h before access to cocaine self-administration. Among humans, we found that expending cognitive effort increased consumption of tasty (but unhealthy) food by increasing the hedonic enjoyment of consuming the food. In addition, the effects were specific for emotionally relevant stimuli (i.e. food rewards) and did not generalize to judgment about neutral objects. Altogether these data suggest that intense cognitive effort can increase the perceived intensity of rewards and lead to their overconsumption. This effect may contribute to bad decision making induced by excessive cognitive effort and make people more vulnerable to indulge in unhealthy behaviors such as use of addictive drugs.
You have requested "on-the-fly" machine translation of selected content from our databases. This functionality is provided solely for your convenience and is in no way intended to replace human translation. Show full disclaimer
Neither ProQuest nor its licensors make any representations or warranties with respect to the translations. The translations are automatically generated "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. PROQUEST AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY, ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Your use of the translations is subject to all use restrictions contained in your Electronic Products License Agreement and by using the translation functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against ProQuest or its licensors for your use of the translation functionality and any output derived there from. Hide full disclaimer
Details



1 Université de Poitiers, INSERM, U1084, Laboratoire de Neurosciences Expérimentales et Cliniques , Poitiers 86073 , France
2 Schulich School of Business, York University , Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 , Canada
3 School of Psychology, University of Queensland , Brisbane, QLD 4067 , Australia