Different functions of physical effort in physical activity and sports: A scoping review of the value of physical effort

Abstract

Generally, effort is understood to be costly. Yet, it also is a generator of value, as it is instrumental for goal attainment but also because effort can be inherently rewarding and/or add value to outcomes. Research on effort’s value-generating functions in sports and exercise seems surprisingly scarce, although they appear to be prototypical contexts. Here, we address this gap by first conceptualizing and then reviewing how physical effort’s value-generating functions have been investigated in previous research. Attesting to the relative lack of research on this topic, an established machine-learning approach (ASReview) yielded 23 relevant papers out of an initial pool of 28,079 papers retrieved from four online databases. Consistent with theoretical assumptions, the reviewed papers showed that physical effort can be inherently rewarding and add value to outcomes. They offer insights into developmental differences in effort valuation and its neural correlates. However, they also reveal a relative inconsistency in how the valuation of effort generalizes across effort domains and highlight differences between measures of effort valuation. Further, although all included articles investigated physical effort’s value, only six approached it in sports and exercise, and nine provided only indirect results. Taken together, this review supports the claim that physical effort can be valuable, it also highlights the demand for future research to close important gaps in the literature and identify underlying and moderating factors. We believe that sports and exercise research provides an ideal starting point for addressing these open questions and additionally benefits from such progress both conceptually and empirically.