The floating duck syndrome
Biased Social Learning Leads to Effort–reward Imbalances
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6145960 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Erol Akçay (0000-0001-8149-7124, University of Pennsylvania), Ryotaro Ohashi (University of Pennsylvania) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Pages | e30-e30 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Evolutionary Human Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2513-843X • E-ISSN: 2513-843X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/ehs.2024.20 |
| PMID | 39220764 |
| OpenAlex | W4396242508 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
An increasingly common phenomenon in modern work and school settings is individuals taking on too many tasks and spending effort without commensurate rewards. Such an imbalance of efforts and rewards leads to myriad negative consequences, such as burnout, anxiety and disease. Here, we develop a model to explain how such effort–reward imbalances can come about as a result of biased social learning dynamics. Our model is based on a phenomenon that on some US college campuses is called ‘the floating duck syndrome’. This phrase refers to the social pressure on individuals to advertise their successes but hide the struggles and the effort put in to achieve them. We show that a bias against revealing the true effort results in social learning dynamics that lead others to underestimate the difficulty of the world. This in turn leads individuals to both invest too much total effort and spread this effort over too many activities, reducing the success rate from each activity and creating effort–reward imbalances. We also consider potential ways to counteract the floating duck effect: we find that solutions other than addressing the root cause, biased observation of effort, are unlikely to work
Anxiety · Cognitive psychology · Phenomenon · Social learning · Work (physics · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Engineering · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Mental Health Research Topics · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |