On the Evaluability of Effort: Influences of Single and Joint Evaluation on Judgments of Subjective Effort in Memorial, Motor, and Perceptual Domains

Theories attempting to explain the evaluation of subjective values often stress the importance of the context in which a judgment is made. One such theory, the General Evaluability Theory (GET; Hsee & Zhang, 2010), suggests judgments are particularly sensitive to evaluation mode (i.e., a single or joint evaluation). Importantly, deviations in the patterns of judgments of a value across single and joint modes are argued to reflect the degree to which individuals can consistently evaluate that value (i.e., the extent of evaluability). We applied this framework to a novel context, specifically the evaluation of effort. Individuals made judgments of effort across memorial, motor, and perceptual domains in single and joint evaluation modes. Results demonstrated that memorial and motor effort judgments remained largely consistent across modes, whereas perceptual effort judgments did not. These results provide initial evidence that at least some types of effort may not be evaluable.