Perceived financial affluence predicts decisions to exert effort in reward pursuit

The willingness to exert effort is essential for gaining something of value. Perceptions of one's financial states, whether affluent or scarce, are thought to be closely linked to motivated behavior in pursuing effortful yet rewarding outcomes. However, direct experimental evidence for this relationship has been limited. To address this gap, we employed an effort-based decision-making paradigm where participants chose between solving easy, low-reward problems and difficult, high-reward problems (n = 192), to assess their willingness to exert effort for potential rewards. We found that participants who perceive themselves to be more financially affluent were more likely to choose difficult yet high-reward problems, resulting in greater monetary gains. This pattern persisted across different domains and remained significant after accounting for potential confounding individual differences. The availability of non-financial resources, such as perceived social support, showed no positive correlation with the choices of difficult problems. Furthermore, participants with greater financial affluence reported significantly lower levels of performance-related anxiety, contributing to their increased choices of difficult problems. Together, by revealing the robust relationship between the perceived financial affluence, willingness to pursue challenging goals, and the resulting outcomes, the present study suggests a possible mechanism underlying the self-reinforcing cycle of wealth and achievement.