Effects of effort sequence and type of consequence in an effort discounting task

The researchers asked adults to pick between easy tasks that paid small or hard tasks that paid more. They changed two things: the order of easy and hard trials, and whether the money was real or pretend.

Each person sat at a computer and made repeated choices. The program tracked how often they picked the harder, bigger reward. The team ran three small experiments to see if the order of work and the type of payoff changed the discounting curve.

Putting all the hard work first made people quit the big reward sooner. Real money kept them trying longer than pretend money. The exact pattern shifted across experiments, so the authors call the results mixed.

Still, the trends were clear: sequence matters, and real consequences matter.

Grace (1995) showed that simply making a response heavier can cut problem behavior. Macías-Navarrete et al. move the lens from response rate to value: once effort is involved, people discount the reward itself.

Odum et al. (2020) reviewed delay discounting and found that food, sex, and cigarettes lose value faster than money. The new study adds effort to that list, showing that how hard you have to work also steepens the curve.

Meshes et al. (2024) compared real aversive sounds with hypothetical money and saw similar outcome-type effects. The 2026 paper mirrors this by showing that real versus hypothetical effort consequences widen the discounting gap.

If you want a client to stick with a tough skill, sprinkle easy trials up front and deliver real payoffs. Token boards, real snacks, or actual free-time minutes beat pretend points. When writing task chains, start with lighter steps so the whole chain doesn’t lose value before the big reinforcer arrives.