Tradeoffs in choice between risk and delay depend on monetary amounts.
Larger rewards make people more willing to wait and less willing to gamble, so size your reinforcement accordingly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults made choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later money.
Some choices were real dollars, some were pretend.
The team raised the dollar amounts across trials to see how size changes preference.
What they found
Bigger fake money made people pick the safe, later option more often.
They hated risk more, yet accepted longer waits.
The same trend showed with real money, but it was weaker.
How this fits with other research
Au-Yeung et al. (2015) repeated the test with a computer game.
They also saw small rewards discounted faster by delay, but amount did not change probability choices.
The new task backs up the 1998 money finding and shows it works for points you can feel.
Nickerson et al. (2015) added a twist: they locked adults at the screen during the wait.
When waiting cost more, people acted as if the reward were smaller.
This helps explain why big money feels less steep: the lost time hurts less when you are free to do other things.
Odum et al. (2020) pooled many studies and found food, cigarettes, and sex all drop in value faster than money.
So the amount rule is strongest for cash and weaker for consumables.
Why it matters
When you teach a learner to wait for reinforcement, start with a big enough payoff and keep other reinforcers available during the wait.
If the prize must be small, shorten the delay or let the client leave the area so the wait feels cheaper.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In Experiments 1 and 2, 25 and 48 college students made binary choices between hypothetical money amounts. In Part A, choices were between small amounts available with certainty and larger amounts ($10 to $10,000) available with risk. Choices in Part B were between immediate small amounts and delayed larger amounts. As money amount grew, risk aversion and delay aversion both changed but in opposite ways: Risk aversion grew but delay aversion shrank. Part C of Experiment 1 pitted risky amounts against delayed amounts, and its results were consistent with those of Parts A and B. Equivalences of particular risks and delays depended on the particular monetary amounts to which they attached. In Experiment 3, 20 college students made binary choices between money amounts, knowing that they would actually receive some of the selections they made. In Part A, choices were between certain small amounts and risky larger amounts ($1 and $10). Choice problems in Part B were between immediate small amounts and delayed receipt of $1 or $10. The results were like those of Experiment 1, though weaker. These results argue against models of choice that posit an equivalence of risk and delay that is independent of monetary amount.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1998 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1998.69-123