RESUMEN

Financial (dis)incentives (e.g., bonuses, taxes) and social incentives (e.g., public praise) have typically been proposed as methods to encourage greater cooperation for the benefit of all. However, when cooperation requires exertion of effort, such interventions might not always be effective. While incentives tend to be highly motivating when choosing to exert effort, evidence suggests that they have less of an effect on behavior during effort execution. The aim of this exploratory study was to incorporate these insights into empirical investigation of the effects of social incentives on cooperative effort. To this end, we modified a public goods game task to require effort contributions to a common good. Crucial manipulation involved incorporating social incentives into this task and linking them to (a) choices that people made or (b) effortful actions they exerted. Our findings suggest, in line with recent effort-based decision-making models, that social incentives have a stronger effect on cooperative effort when they are linked to choices that people make, rather than the actual effort they exert. This study demonstrates potential benefits of eliciting a priori declarations of cooperative effort tied to social incentives to encourage greater effort for the benefit of all.

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RESUMEN

The effects of presenteeism, that is, working while ill or exhausted, are unclear, as previous research has yielded contradictory results. The aim of this study was thus two-fold: clarify the differential effects of short versus long-term presenteeism and corroborate the mediating effect of effort exertion on the relationship between presenteeism and work-related outcomes. We adopt a three-wave panel design and measure all the variables at three different points (initially, after one week and after one year) to understand the effects of presenteeism over time. Our sample consists of 361 Chinese employees working in diverse industries in Taiwan. We analyze the panel data using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping. Our results reveal that presenteeism is positively associated with increased effort, work engagement, and job performance after one week. By contrast, presenteeism is negatively associated with job performance and work engagement though positively associated with emotional exhaustion after one-year. Our research contributes to clarify paradoxical results regarding presenteeism's consequences, as well as corroborating that effort exertion mediates the relationship between presenteeism and work outcomes. We also identify practical implications for organizations managing employees working remotely, a more common reality with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing lockdowns and digitalization which has started to become the norm for a significant proportion of working sectors. Finally, we suggest recommendations for future research on presenteeism.

RESUMEN

The presence of another person can influence task performance. What is, however, still unclear is whether performance also depends on what this other person is doing. In two experiments, two participants (A and B) jointly performed a Simon task, and we selectively manipulated the difficulty of the task for participant A only. This was achieved by presenting A with 90% congruent trials (creating an easy task requiring low effort investment) or 10% congruent trials (creating a difficult task requiring high effort investment). Although this manipulation is irrelevant for the task of participant B, we nevertheless observed that B exerted more mental effort when participant A performed the difficult version of the task, compared to the easy version. Crucially, in Experiment 2 this was found to be the case even when participants could not see each other's stimuli. These results provide a first compelling demonstration that the exertion of effort is contagious.

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