Effort Lab

Welcome to the Effort Lab

The Effort Lab focuses on the determinants and mechanisms of effort investment in goal-directed behavior. To investigate this fundamental issue of human motivation and behavior, we employ behavioral and physiological methods.

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Dr. Michael Richter

Phone: +44 151 231 2220
Email: m.richter@ljmu.ac.uk
Affiliation: Liverpool John Moores University

I am an experimental psychologist examining the mechanisms underlying effort investment in goal pursuit employing behavioral and physiological measures. I am especially interested in understanding the similarities and differences between physical and mental effort.

I studied Psychology at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. During my PhD at the same university, I examined the impact of mood on effort-related cardiovascular response-supervised by Professor Guido H.E. Gendolla. After my PhD in 2004, I worked at the Geneva Motivation Lab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, as Assistant, Maître-assistant, and Maître d'enseignement et de recherche. In 2015, I moved to Liverpool John Moores University, where I currently hold a position as a Reader in Motivation Psychology at the School of Natural Sciences and Psychology.

Georgia Burton

Phone: NA
Email: g.a.burton@ljmu.ac.uk
Affiliation: Liverpool John Moore University

I am a PhD student at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) aiming to create a training programme to reduce compulsive behaviour in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I hold an MSc in Brain and Behaviour from LJMU, which included learning about the concepts of response inhibition and habitual vs goal-directed behaviours. These concepts have formed the basis of the PhD project, which is being supervised by Dr Michael Richter, Dr Susannah Walker and Dr Paula Banca.

Silvio Laloli

Phone: NA
Email: silvio.laloli@unige.ch
Affiliation: University of Geneva

I am a PhD candidate at Geneva University and with my work I aim to better understand the role of implicit motivations on effort investment, learning processes and incentive sensitivity.

I obtained my Master degree in psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. My thesis concerned the role played by a predictable context for prospective memory. During my studies, I developed a keen interest in mnemonic, motivational and learning processes. These topics became central for my work as PhD student within the project supervised by Dr. Kerstin Brinkmann (University of Geneva) and Dr. Michael Richter (Liverpool John Moores University).

Lia Harrison

Phone: NA
Email: NA
Affiliation: NA

Lia worked on the Achievement Motive Project with Dr Michael Richter investigating how achievement motive and task difficulty affect the effort that individuals invest in a physical handgrip task. She studied Psychology (BSc) at the University of Liverpool, graduating in 2016. For her third year dissertation she conducted research into episodic memory, investigating the extent to which people are able to create new memories while attempting to retrieve information from their long-term memory.

Jessica Henderson

Phone: NA
Email: NA
Affiliation: NA

Jessica worked as research assistant with Dr Ruth Ogden, Dr Michael Richter, and Prof Francis McGlone investigating arousal effects on time perception and timed behaviour. She studied Psychology (BSc) at The University of Huddersfield, and Psychology (MRes) at The University of Manchester. For her Master dissertation, she conducted a physiological investigation of repetitive stimulation on time perception.

Florence Mazeres

Phone: NA
Email: florence.mazeres@univ-eiffel.fr
Affiliation: University of Geneva

Florence was a PhD student at the Geneva Motivation Lab and the Effort Lab from 2016 to 2022. She finished her PhD on the impact of implicit and explicit achievement motives on effort mobilization at the University of Geneva in 2022. She is now at the Laboratoire Ergonomie et Sciences Cognitives pour les Transportsthe Department at the Universite Gustave Eiffel.

Stephen Pritchard

Phone: NA
Email: NA
Affiliation: NA

Stephen was a PhD student at the Effort Lab from 2020 to 2024 examining social class bias on creativity measures.

Katherine Slade

Phone: +441524593164
Email: k.slade2@lancaster.ac.uk
Affiliation: Lancaster University

Kate was a PhD student at the Effort Lab from 2016 to 2019. She finished her PhD on the physiological correlates of effortful listening in June 2019. She is now a research associate at Lancaster University (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/kate-slade).

Johanna Berit Slid

Phone: NA
Email: NA
Affiliation: NA

Johanna worked on the Achievement Motive Project with Dr Michael Richter investigating how achievement motive and task difficulty affect the effort that individuals invest in a physical handgrip task. She graduated with a BSc in Psychology from the University of Liverpool in 2018. In her third year dissertation she investigated the impact of microaggressions on internalized stigma and mental health of LGBQ students.

Recent Publications

Boedker, I., Ball, H. L., Richter, M., South, T. L., & Roberts, S. G. B. (2024). Construction of the Views oN Infant Sleep (VNIS) questionnaire. Early Human Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2024.105989 Link to article

Plain, B., Pielage, H., Kramer, S. E., Richter, M., Saunders, G., Versfeld, N., Zekveld, A. A., & Bhuiyan, T. (2024). Combining cardiovascular and pupil features using k-nearest neighbor classifiers to assess task demand, social context and sentence accuracy during listening. Trends in Hearing, 28. https://doi.org/10.1177/23312165241232551 Link to article

Plain, B. J. , Pielage, H. , Zekveld A., Richter, M., Bhuiyan, T. A., van de Ven S. R. B., & Kramer, S. E. (2024). Incorporating virtual reality agents during a dichotic speech reception task: insights from the heart. Ear and Hearing.

Richter, M., & Gendolla, G. H. E. (2024). Commentary: Mental computational processes have always been an integral part of motivation science. Behavioural and Brain Sciences.

Richter, M., & Gendolla, G. H. E. (2024). Theories and hypotheses: The forgotten plane of the multiverse. International Journal of Psychophysiology.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2024.112438 Link to article

Alfandari, D., Fiedler, L., Wendt, D., Richter, M., & Naylor, G. (2023). Previous mental load and incentives influence anticipatory arousal as indexed by the baseline pupil diameter in a speech-in-noise task. Trends in Hearing, 27. https://doi.org/10.1177/23312165231196520 Link to article

Lasauskaite, R., Richter, M., & Cajochen, C. (2023). Lighting color temperature impacts effort-related cardiovascular response to an auditory short-term memory task. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 87, 101976. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101976 Link to article

Richter, M., Buhiyan, T., Bramslow, L., Innes-Brown, H., Fiedler, L., Hadley, L. V., Naylor, G. Suanders, G. H., Wendt, D., Whitmer, W. M., Zekveld, A. A. & Kramer, S. E. (2023). Combining multiple psychophysiological measures of listening effort: Challenges and recommendations. Seminars in Hearing. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0043-1767669 Link to article

Bernard,L. C., Cieciuch, J., Lac, A., Zuro, B., Krupic, D., Richter, M., Silvestrini, N., & von Helversen, B. (2021). A cross-cultural study of purposive “traits of action”: measurement invariance of scales based on the action–trait theory of human motivation using exploratory structural equation modeling Studia Psychologica: Theoria et Praxis, 21, 5-29. https://doi.org/10.21697/sp.2021.21.1.01 Link to article

Brinkmann, K., Richter, M., & Gendolla, G. H. E. (2021). The intensity side of volition. A theoretical and empirical overview of effortful striving. Zeitschrift für Sportpsychologie, 28, 97-108. https://doi.org/10.1026/1612-5010/a000323 Link to article

Czarnek, G., Kossowska, M., & Richter, M. (2021). Stereotyping and effort mobilization in older age: The role of self-involvement. In G. Sędęk, T. Hess, & D. Touron (Eds.), Multiple pathways of cognitive aging: Motivational and contextual influences (pp. 105-127). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197528976.003.0006 Link to chapter

Czarnek, G., Richter, M., & Strojny, P. (2021). Cardiac sympathetic activity during recovery as an indicator of sympathetic activity during task performance. Psychophysiology, 58, e13724. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13724 Link to article

Mazeres, F., Brinkmann, K., & Richter, M. (2021a). Explicit achievement motive strength determines effort-related myocardial beta-adrenergic activity if task difficulty is unclear but not if task difficulty is clear. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 169, 11-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2021.08.004 Link to article

Mazeres, F., Brinkmann, K., & Richter, M. (2021b). Motivated but not engaged: The implicit achievement motive requires difficult or unclear task difficulty conditions to exert an impact on effort. Journal of Research in Personality, 94, 104145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104145 Link to article

Plain, B., Pielage, H., Richter, M., Bhuiyan, T., Lunner, T., Kramer, S. E., & Zekveld, A. A. (2021). Social observation increases the cardiovascular response of hearing-impaired listeners during a speech reception task. Hearing Research, 410, 108334. doi:10.1016/j.heares.2021.108334 Link to article

Richter, M., Mazeres, F., & Brinkmann, K. (2021). Clarity of task difficulty moderates the impact of the explicit achievement motive on physical effort in hand grip tasks. PLOS ONE, 16, e0252713. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252713 Link to article

Slade, K., Kramer, S. E., Fairclough, S., & Richter, M. (2021). Effortful listening: Sympathetic activity varies as a function of listening demand but parasympathetic activity does not. Hearing Research, 410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2021.108348 Link to article

Stanek, J. C., & Richter, M. (2021). Energy investment and motivation: The additive impact of task demand and reward value on exerted force in hand grip tasks. Motivation and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-020-09862-2 Link to article

Czarnek, G., Strojny, P., Strojny, A., & Richter, M. (2020). Assessing engagement during rescue operation simulated in virtual reality: a psychophysiological study. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 36, 464-476. doi:10.1080/10447318.2019.1655905 Link to article

Kramer, S. E., Bhuiyan, T., Bramsløw, L., Fiedler, L., Graversen, C., Hadley KVm Innes-Brown, H., Naylor, G., Richter, M., Saunders, G. H., Versfeld, N. J., Wendt, D., Whitmer, W. M., & Zekveld, A. A. (2020). Innovative HEaring Aid Research – Ecological Conditions and Outcome measures: the HEAR-ECO project. Hearing Review.

Plain, B., Richter, M., Zekveld, A. A., Lunner, T., Bhuiyan, T., & Kramer, S. E. (2020). Investigating the influence of task demand and reward and cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) reactivity during a speech-in-noise task.Ear and Hearing, 42, 718-731. doi:10.1097/AUD.0000000000000971 Link to article

Czarnek, G., Kossowska, M., & Richter, M. (2019). Aging, effort, and stereotyping: The evidence for the moderating role of self-involvement. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 138, 1-10. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2019.01.009 Link to article

Gendolla, G. H. E., Wright, R. A., & Richter, M. (2019). Advancing issues in motivation theory intensity research: Updated insights from the cardiovascular system. In R. M. Ryan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook on motivation (2nd ed., pp. 373-392). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190666453.013.21 Link to article

Mazeres, F., Brinkmann, K., & Richter, M. (2019). Implicit achievement motive limits the impact of task difficulty on effort-related cardiovascular response. Journal of Research in Personality, 82, 103842. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2019.06.012 Link to article

Ogden, R. S., Henderson, J., McGlone, F., & Richter, M. (2019). Time distortion under threat: Sympathetic arousal predicts time distortion only in the context of negative, highly arousing stimuli. PLoS ONE, 14, e0216704. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0216704 Link to article

Ogden, R. S., Henderson, J., Slade, K., McGlone, F., & Richter, M. (2019). The effect of increased parasympathetic activity on perceived duration. Consciousness and Cognition, 76. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2019.102829. Link to article

Slade, K. (2019). Conference review: 11th Anniversary Meeting of the Society for the Science of Motivation. PsyPAG Quarterly, 110, 48-50. Link to article

Kuipers, M., Richter, M., Scheepers, D., Immink, M. A., Sjak-Shie, E., & van Steenbergen, H. (2017). How effortful is cognitive control? Insights from a novel method measuring single-trial evoked beta-adrenergic cardiac reactivity. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 119, 87-92. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.10.007 Link to article

Richter, M., & Slade, K. (2017). Interpretation of physiological indicators of motivation: Caveats and recommendations. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 119, 4-10. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2017.04.007 Link to article

Pichora-Fuller, M. K., Kramer, S. E., Eckert, M., et al. (2016). Hearing impairment and cognitive energy: A framework for understanding effortful listening (FUEL). Ear and Hearing, 37, 5S-27S. doi:10.1097/AUD.0000000000000312 Link to article

Richter, M. (2016). The moderating effect of success importance on the relationship between listening demand and listening effort. Ear and Hearing, 37, 111S-117S. doi:10.1097/AUD.0000000000000295 Link to article

Richter, M. (2016). Residual tests in the analysis of planned contrasts: Problems and solutions. Psychological Methods, 21, 112-120. doi:10.1037/met0000044 Link to article

Richter, M. (2016). Comment: Where is the theory? A critical comment on multiple arousal theory. Emotion Review, 8, 82-83. doi:10.1177/1754073915572146 Link to article

Richter, M., Brinkmann, K., & Carbajal, I. (2016). Effort and autonomic activity: A meta-analysis of four decades of research on motivational intensity theory. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 108, 34. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.07.113 <Link to article

Richter, M., Gendolla, G. H. E., & Wright, R. A. (2016). Three decades of research on motivational intensity theory: What we have learned about effort and what we still don't know. In A. J. Elliot (Ed.), Advances in motivation science (pp. 149-186). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. doi:10.1016/bs.adms.2016.02.001 Link to article

Stanek, J. C., & Richter, M. (2016). Evidence against the primacy of energy conservation: Exerted force in possible and impossible handgrip tasks. Motivation Science, 2, 49-65. doi:10.1037/mot0000028 Link to article

Richter, M. (2015). Commentary; Pre-crastination: Hastening subgoal completion at the expense of extra physical effort". Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1269. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01269 Link to article

Richter, M. (2015). Goal pursuit and energy conservation: Energy investment increases with task demand but does not equal it. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 25–33. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9429-y Link to article

Richter, M., & Stanek, J. (2015). The muscle metaphor in self-regulation in the light of current theorizing on muscle physiology. In G. H. E. Gendolla, M. Tops, & S. L. Koole (Eds.), Handbook of biobehavioral approaches to self-regulation (pp. 55–68). New York, NY: Springer. Link to chapter

Liverpool John Moores University

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Intensity List

The intensity list has the goal to inform about recent developments and publications (e.g., "in press" work) on topics related to the intensity aspect of motivation and emotion.

If you would like to disseminate information via the intensity list, please send a short description of the information that you would like to see on the intensity list to guido.gendolla@unige.ch or m.richter@ljmu.ac.uk. If possible, provide a link to a web page that provides detailed information.

If you would like to receive the information that is disseminated via the intensity list, you may access the Intensity List RSS Feed using your favorite news aggregator (also termed feed reader or rss reader) and/or you may send a short note to guido.gendolla@unige.ch. Guido will add your email address to a mailing list and keep you informed.

Contact

Michael Richter
Liverpool John Moores University
School of Psychology
Tom Reilly Building, Byrom Street
Liverpool
L3 3AF, UK

Phone: +44 151 904 2220
Email: m.richter@ljmu.ac.uk