Failure to replicate the 'work ethic" effect in pigeons.
Extra effort does not make a reinforcer more powerful if the payoff itself stays the same.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Six experiments tested pigeons in a classic choice box.
Birds first pecked many times to earn one colored light, or few times for another color.
Later both lights gave food at the same rate. The team asked: do birds now pick the light that once cost more work?
What they found
The pigeons did not care.
Across every test they chose each light about half the time, even when one had taken five times more pecks to earn.
The famous 'work ethic' effect did not show up.
How this fits with other research
Kydd et al. (1982) saw the same shrug when pigeons chose between delays that looked different but averaged the same.
Fine et al. (2005) also found weak or no preference when birds picked between fixed and random schedules.
These three studies line up: when the final payoff is equal, birds ignore the path they took to get there.
Sturmey et al. (1996) adds detail: local details like the smallest ratio count, not the overall effort story.
Why it matters
For your clients, the lesson is clear. A token or praise is worth what it buys, not how hard it was earned. Skip extra work just to "make them value it more" if the back-up reinforcer stays the same. Save time and keep motivation high.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Check your token chart: remove any step that adds work but no extra back-up reinforcer.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
We report six unsuccessful attempts to replicate the "work ethic" phenomenon reported by Clement, Feltus, Kaiser, and Zentall (2000). In Experiments 1-5, pigeons learned two simultaneous discriminations in which the S+ and S- stimuli were obtained by pecking an initial stimulus once or multiple (20 or 40) times. Subsequent preference tests between the S+ stimuli and between the S- stimuli mostly revealed indifference, on average, between the S+ from the multiple-peck (high-effort) trials and the S+ from the one-peck (low-effort) trials, and likewise between the two respective Sstimuli. Using a slightly different procedure that permitted assessment of the relative aversiveness of low versus high effort, Experiment 6 again revealed a pattern of indifference despite showing that pigeons took considerably longer to begin pecking on high- than on low-effort trials. Our findings call into question the reliability of the original findings and the sufficiency of the hypothesized within-trial contrast mechanism to produce them.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2007 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2007.68-06