Opportunity costs of reward delays and the discounting of hypothetical money and cigarettes.
Making clients stay put during reward delays steepens their discounting curves, so manage the wait context, not just the reward size.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults made choices between small rewards now or bigger rewards later. They stayed at the computer during the wait time. The team raised the cost of waiting by adding more required time at the screen.
People chose between hypothetical money and hypothetical cigarettes. The study tracked how much each reward lost value as the forced wait grew longer.
What they found
Higher opportunity costs made both rewards look worse. People wanted even more to skip the wait as the stuck-at-computer time rose.
Cigarettes dropped in value faster than money. The classic hyperbolic curve, size effect, and steep cigarette discounting all showed up again.
How this fits with other research
Odum et al. (2020) reviewed many studies and also found that cigarettes lose value faster than cash. The new data match that pattern.
Macaskill et al. (2023) went further and cut off access to other reinforcers during real delays. They saw the same steep curves, showing that limited choice steepens discounting even when the reward is real.
Meshes et al. (2024) used real sounds and money in the lab. Their mixed results hint that switching from hypothetical to real outcomes can change the curve shape, a point clinicians should watch.
Why it matters
If you need a client to wait for reinforcement, remember that the surrounding constraints matter as much as the reward size. Reduce their access to other activities during the delay and you will see faster devaluation of the later payoff. Try shortening wait times or giving small reinforcers during the pause to keep the target reward valuable.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Humans are reported to discount delayed rewards at lower rates than nonhumans. However, nonhumans are studied in tasks that restrict reinforcement during delays, whereas humans are typically studied in tasks that do not restrict reinforcement during delays. In nonhuman tasks, the opportunity cost of restricted reinforcement during delays may increase delay discounting rates. The present within-subjects study used online crowdsourcing (Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk) to assess the discounting of hypothetical delayed money (and cigarettes in smokers) under four hypothetical framing conditions differing in the availability of reinforcement during delays. At one extreme, participants were free to leave their computer without returning, and engage in any behavior during reward delays (modeling typical human tasks). At the opposite extreme, participants were required to stay at their computer and engage in little other behavior during reward delays (modeling typical nonhuman tasks). Discounting rates increased as an orderly function of opportunity cost. Results also indicated predominantly hyperbolic discounting, the "magnitude effect," steeper discounting of cigarettes than money, and positive correlations between discounting rates of these commodities. This is the first study to test the effects of opportunity costs on discounting, and suggests that procedural differences may partially account for observed species differences in discounting.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jeab.110