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Published on: June 5, 2016
Response effort discounts the subjective value of rewards
1Department of Psychological Sciences, Kwansei Gakuin University, 1-155 Uegahara Ichibancho, Nishinomiya 662-8501, Japan.
Abstract:
Factors associated with obtaining a reward, such as a temporal delay in receiving the reward, can influence the subjective value of the reward. Cognitive as well as physical response effort is also known to influence choice behaviors. The present study used hypothetical situations to assess whether response effort affects the subjective value of rewards. The results demonstrated that increasing response effort increases the amount of money that participants are willing to forgo to avoid engaging in work. An exponential as well as hyperbolic function provided a good fit for such discounting. The findings suggest that response effort discounts the subjective value of a reward as a function of its amount.
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