Expectancy and apparent duration as determinants of fatigue.

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Abstract
Investigated the conditions under which induced perceptions of the duration of effort on one task affect performance on a subsequent similar task. All Ss (25 male and 8 female undergraduates) worked for 8 min on a pursuit rotor task, but half were led to believe they had worked for 4 min and the other half for 12 min. If these Ss had no prior temporal standard by which to evaluate their fatigue, their performance on a subsequent reaction time study was better in the 4-min than in the 12-min group. However, if Ss had had a previous practice period and had been clearly and accurately informed that the practice period was 8 min, this expectancy relating duration to experienced fatigue brought about a reversal of the findings. Under these conditions, Ss in the 4-min group performed more poorly than the 12-min Ss on the subsequent reaction time test. Results are presented as analogous to positive vs negative placebo effects in the experience of pain or illness. It is suggested that clear expectancies can serve as internal standards against which subsequent experiences are evaluated. Further analysis of the results show that the effect of internal standards was more pronounced for normal than for obese subjects. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

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