Is There a Limit to Laziness? How Others’ Behaviour Impacts Effort Aversion

People are lazy. According to the law of least effort, people generally prefer to exert less rather than more effort to achieve the same reward. However, this research often isolates individuals from social influences, overlooking the fact that we are inherently social beings whose behaviour is shaped by the norms and information we gather from others. Here, we investigate whether individuals are more willing to exert effort when surrounded by high-effort peers and less willing with effort misers. Across eight studies (N = 1,473), participants completed a demand-selection task where they repeatedly chose between a hard or easy task. While people generally shun effort, results revealed that participants exerted significantly more effort after learning that previous participants consistently chose 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. Interestingly, individuals’ effort preferences were not influenced by the behaviour of others when those others completed an unrelated task. These findings suggest that while others' behaviour can inspire us to work harder, there are limits to our laziness. We might be effort misers, but this miserliness appears to have a ceiling.