Believes over Fatigue: Willpower Beliefs and Monetary Incentives Modulate Effort Exertion through Compensation and Conservation.

We examined whether experimental manipulations of willpower beliefs and incentives can influence cardiovascular effort after fatigue induction. Participants completed a paradigm of increasing task difficulty. Willpower beliefs helped participants to allocate their effort by compensating for prior fatigue in highly incentivized conditions but to withhold effort under low incentives.