Determinants of persistence in sequential effort-based decision-making

Clearing the first checkpoint in a novel sequential effort-based avatar task sharply increased persistence, showing early success strongly shapes whether participants keep attempting after failure.

• Why it matters: Goal-directed behavior depends on sustaining effort across interdependent decisions, but how persistence versus disengagement emerges from fatigue, progress, and goal proximity is unclear.
• What they did: Participants repeatedly chose to persist or disengage to an easier, less rewarding alternative across successive checkpoints; persistence and disengagement were analyzed alongside task difficulty, skill, time-on-task, accumulated errors, goal proximity, and effort evaluations.
• The result: Disengagement increased with task difficulty, lower skill, repeated attempts, time-on-task, and accumulated errors, while proximity to the goal promoted persistence; persistence reflected prior investment and anticipated effort, and disengagement followed short-term performance decline without detectable decision conflict.