Declines in effort and performance following sustained goal pursuit are frequently explained in terms of people's limited resources for engaging in self-regulation (Muraven & Baumeister Reference Muraven and Baumeister2000). Although many findings support such limited-resource explanations (see Hagger et al. Reference Hagger, Wood, Stiff and Chatzisarantis2010a), emerging evidence has produced a growing consensus that changes in people's motivation, rather than their capacity for self-regulation, may be responsible for decreases in performance over time (Beedie & Lane Reference Beedie and Lane2012; Inzlicht & Schmeichel Reference Inzlicht and Schmeichel2012; Molden et al. Reference Molden, Hui, Scholer, Meier, Noreen, D'Agostino and Martin2012). The target article by Kurzban and colleagues not only adds to this consensus, but also provides a more detailed account of how such changes in motivation and performance arise.

Perhaps the most novel and intriguing aspects of Kurzban et al.'s account of self-regulation is the proposed role of people's experiences of effort and fatigue on their motivations to persist with a current task or goal. In this account, such experiences alter the perceived opportunity costs involved in maintaining this goal versus pursuing an alternative goal, and thus shift motivations away from the present task and toward different endeavors. This opportunity cost mechanism helps to explain and integrate many findings from a variety of literatures. However, the phenomenology of effort is also connected to additional motivational processes that influence self-regulation and performance. Below, I review research that illustrates these additional processes and extends Kurzban et al.'s motivational analysis.

Determining the perceived costs and benefits of particular outcomes is certainly one of the primary routes through which motivations affect goal pursuit and performance (see Molden & Higgins Reference Molden, Higgins, Holyoak and Morrison2012). However, another influence of motivation on goal pursuit is how it alters the experiences people have during this pursuit (Higgins Reference Higgins2006). That is, many motivational interventions that boost performance do not merely influence evaluations of the costs and benefits of different goals or outcomes, but instead change people's experiences of effort and engagement while pursuing these outcomes.

For example, much research has shown that goals involving feelings of autonomy and self-direction, rather than feelings of control and coercion, create greater engagement and enjoyment (Deci & Ryan Reference Deci and Ryan2000). Consistent with these general findings, people who perceive that they have autonomously chosen to perform vigilance-related self-control tasks (e.g., monitoring for the appearance of a particular stimulus) experience less fatigue and more energy, which then increases how long they can successfully perform these tasks (Muraven et al. Reference Muraven, Gagné and Rosman2008; see also Moller et al. Reference Moller, Deci and Ryan2006; Muraven Reference Muraven2008). Moreover, additional research has shown that when the strategies people employ during goal pursuit are motivationally compatible with their broader self-regulatory preferences, this creates experiences of regulatory fit (Higgins Reference Higgins, Shah and Gardner2008). Such fit also increases engagement in and enjoyment of goal pursuit, which subsequently improves performance on self-control tasks involving vigilance (e.g., avoiding distraction) and resistance to tempting alternatives (e.g., choosing fruit over chocolate as a snack; Freitas et al. Reference Freitas, Liberman and Higgins2002; Hong & Lee Reference Hong and Lee2008).

The effects on self-regulation of experiences of engagement arising from autonomy or regulatory fit are broadly consistent with the central role that Kurzban and colleagues give to feelings of effort and fatigue in goal pursuit. However, these findings also demonstrate that, just as experiences of effort can affect motivations to sustain performance on current goals, so, too, can the broader motivational context in which a goal is pursued affect performance by influencing experiences of effort.

Beyond directly altering experiences of effort during goal pursuit, various motivational processes can also affect self-regulation and performance by influencing how people interpret these experiences (see Molden & Dweck Reference Molden and Dweck2006). That is, although people may often attribute feelings of effort and fatigue to diminishing returns for the continued pursuit of a current goal, and thus shift attention to other alternatives, research has also shown that other attributions for these feelings with different implications for self-regulation and performance are possible. Indeed, some studies have even shown that, in particular contexts, experiences of effort are interpreted as signs of progress and sustain goal pursuit.

One clear demonstration of how varying interpretations of effort experiences can dramatically influence the effect these experiences have on subsequent self-regulation and performance was provided by Clarkson et al. (Reference Clarkson, Hirt, Jia and Alexander2010). When people were led to attribute feelings of effort to a superficial source unrelated to the pursuit of their primary goal (e.g., the color of the paper on which their task instructions were printed), they no longer showed subsequent declines in persistence or performance. Furthermore, when they view effort as an instrumental part of achieving their desired goals, people then interpret experiences of effort as signaling progress toward goal completion, and these experiences help sustain rather than undermine self-regulation and performance (Labroo & Kim Reference Labroo and Kim2009; Miele et al. Reference Miele, Finn and Molden2011; Miele & Molden Reference Miele and Molden2010). Thus, instead of highlighting growing opportunity costs, effort experiences can also at times indicate that continued goal pursuit is likely to yield benefits.

The effects on self-regulation of attributions for effort experiences are also broadly consistent with the important role that Kurzban and colleagues give to effort phenomenology in explaining the maintenance of or disengagement from goal pursuit. However, these findings also demonstrate that effects of such phenomenology are not limited to static considerations of opportunity costs but are instead altered by people's dynamic interpretations of their experiences of effort, engagement, or fatigue during self-regulation.

To summarize, Kurzban et al. have made a substantial contribution to the literature on self-regulation and performance with their analysis of how people's experiences of effort during goal pursuit affect their likelihood of sustaining this pursuit. Here, I expand this contribution by noting that: (1) Experiences of effort are not simply determined by bottom-up evaluations of goal progress, but can also be influenced by top-down orientations that determine the broader motivational context within which the goal is pursued. (2) Effort experiences can afford many other attributions beyond the rising opportunity costs associated with continued pursuit of the same goal, and, within mindsets where effort is directly linked to progress, such experiences can even increase goal commitment. These expansions broaden the scope of the model proposed by Kurzban et al. and make it applicable to an even wider range of phenomena.