The effort heuristic

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Abstract

The research presented here suggests that effort is used as a heuristic for quality. Participants rating a poem (Experiment 1), a painting (Experiment 2), or a suit of armor (Experiment 3) provided higher ratings of quality, value, and liking for the work the more time and effort they thought it took to produce. Experiment 3 showed that the use of the effort heuristic, as with all heuristics, is moderated by ambiguity: Participants were more influenced by effort when the quality of the object being evaluated was difficult to ascertain. Discussion centers on the implications of the effort heuristic for everyday judgment and decision-making.

Section snippets

Experiment 1: Poetry

Participants read and evaluated the poem “Order” by contemporary poet Michael Van Walleghen. Half were told that it took Van Walleghen 4 h to compose the poem (low-effort condition), and half were told that it took 18 h (high-effort condition). We predicted that participants would evaluate the poem more favorably when told that it took 18 h to complete than when told it took 4 h.

Experiment 2: Painting

Our next experiment was designed to extend the results of the previous experiment to a different artistic domain (painting), and to see whether effort would be used as a heuristic for quality even among people with self-proclaimed expertise in the subject at hand. In keeping with previous work (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1971), we reasoned that the use of effort among self-perceived experts would constitute a conservative test of the heuristic.

An additional change from the previous experiment

Experiment 3: Arms and armor

Our third and final experiment was designed to extend the results of the previous two experiments to a third domain, and also to examine a potential moderator in the use of the effort heuristic: ambiguity. If effort is a heuristic for quality, it follows that it ought to be particularly utilized in judgments of particularly ambiguous stimuli. Thus, in addition to varying the perceived effort invested by the artist, we also varied the ambiguity of the stimulus.

Specifically, participants in

General discussion

In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock burst on the international art scene—then dominated by Picasso, Dali, and Magritte—and quickly became one of the “greatest American painter[s] of the 20th Century” (Seiberling, 1949, p. 42). His unconventional “drip method” yielded some of the most prized—and expensive—artworks produced in the last century.

As revolutionary as his technique and paintings are today, many of his contemporary critics (and much of the general public) were unimpressed. “Jackson

Acknowledgements

This research was supported financially by Research Grant 1-2-69853 from the University of Illinois Board of Trustees awarded to Justin Kruger. Portions of this research were presented at Society for Personality and Social Psychology 2001 and Midwestern Psychological Association 2002 annual meetings.

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