Physical effort has long been viewed as an aversive experience that people generally seek to avoid, giving rise to the so-called "law of least effort," which posits that, other things being equal, people tend to minimize effort when engaging in goal-directed tasks. This principle has recently been applied to physical activity behavior (Cheval & Boisgontier, 2021). 
 
However, beyond this general view of physical effort as an aversive experience to be avoided, substantial individual differences in the valuation of physical effort have been observed. This suggests that some individuals may actually evaluate physical effort positively. Contrary to the law of least effort, these individuals may prefer behavioral alternatives that require more effort, all else being equal (Inzlicht et al., 2018). Until the development of the Physical Effort Scale (Cheval et al., 2024) and the present work by Bieleke et al. (2024), no formal scale existed to capture such individual differences in the valuation of physical effort. The primary goal of the present study was to design, develop, and validate such a scale.
 
To achieve this goal, the authors conducted three independent studies (total N = 1,364) to establish the psychometric properties of the Value of Physical Effort (VoPE) scale (Bieleke et al., 2024). Across these studies, using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs and a variety of statistical techniques (e.g., psychometric network analysis, elastic net regression), results indicated that the VoPE scale has robust associations with physical activity behaviors, strong test-retest reliability, and captures unique variance in predicting exercise behaviors. Taken together, these findings suggest that the VoPE scale is a valid and reliable measure of individual differences in the valuation of physical effort.

 

References

Bieleke M, Stähler J, Wolff W, Schüler J. Development and validation of the Value of Physical Effort (VoPE) scale.PsyArXiv. 2023, version 5. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pqw26. Peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Health and Movement Sciences. https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.healthmovsci.100115

Cheval B, Boisgontier MP. The theory of effort minimization in physical activity. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2021;49(3):168-178. https://doi.org/10.1249/JES.0000000000000252

Cheval B, Maltagliati S, Courvoisier DS, Marcora S, Boisgontier MP.Development and validation of the physical effort scale (PES). Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2024;72:102607. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2024.102607

Inzlicht M, Shenhav A, Olivola CY. The effort paradox: effort is both costly and valued. Trends Cogn Sci. 2018;22(4):337-349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.007