Motivation for the greater good: neural mechanisms of overcoming costs

Abstract

To obtain greater goods decision makers often have to incur and endure costs. Here we review mechanisms that enhance the willingness to accept and overcome costs in individual and social settings. General, cost-invariant mechanisms involve controlling and reducing reward-related impulsivity, abstracting from personal and situational circumstances, changing the availability of options in the choice set, and reinterpreting aspects of the choice alternatives. These mechanisms are based on fronto-striatal and fronto-parietal networks for valuation and goal-setting. More specific, cost-variant mechanisms include effort endurance, imagining future events, tolerating risk, and empathy. These mechanisms rely on cost-specific brain mechanisms, as well as interactions with the valuation network in accordance with cost-variant changes in the valuation of the costly choice alternatives. We identify knowledge gaps, which are exacerbated by studies typically focusing only on one cost type. Moreover, many of the identified mechanisms of enduring costs provide largely untrodden paths for interventions to increase cost endurance in clinical and non-clinical domains.