Effort Norms Encourage More Exertion but Not Less

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 examine whether individuals conform to both high-effort and low-effort norms equally, or whether the strength of normative influence on effort choices depends on the direction of the norm. Across twelve studies (N = 2,084), participants completed a demand-selection task where they repeatedly chose between a hard or easy task. While people generally avoid 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. Even after increasing the acceptability of low effort—by enhancing the value of low effort and the psychological closeness to past participants—individuals still opposed the low effort norm, exerting no less effort than the control group. These findings suggest that while others' behaviour can inspire us to work harder, individuals show resistance to lowering their effort below what they would typically exert. While we consistently found conformity to high-effort norms, effort preferences were not influenced when hearing about others completing an unrelated task, pointing to a possible boundary condition for norm effects.