Prof. Christopher Mlynski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing and the Department of Applied Social Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He previously held positions at the University of Vienna and the Technical University of Dresden. His research examines how people perceive, experience, and respond to effort, and how these processes shape important life outcomes. His work comprises three interrelated programs of research. The first examines how individuals’ beliefs about effort as an enjoyable or aversive phenomenon influence their willingness to invest effort in pursuing long-term goals. The second investigates how effort-contingent rewards can increase the intrinsic value of effort and reduce effort avoidance. The third develops and applies psychophysiological methods to quantify effort mobilization and task engagement, providing objective tools for studying effort in real time.

His research has been published in leading journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Prof. Mlynski currently serves as Secretary of the Society for the Science of Motivation.