Back
Parabolic discounting of monetary rewards by physical effort.
Journal article

Parabolic discounting of monetary rewards by physical effort.

  • Hartmann MN Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital, University of Zurich, Lenggstrasse 31, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland; Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: matthias.hartmann@uzh.ch.
  • Hager OM
  • Tobler PN
  • Kaiser S
  • 2013-10-22
Published in:
  • Behavioural processes. - 2013
CHF
Decision-making
Discounting
Effort discounting
Effort-based decision making
MVC
N
Newton
Reward
SV
Swiss Francs
maximum voluntary contraction
milliseconds
ms
s
seconds
subjective value
Adult
Choice Behavior
Female
Hand Strength
Humans
Male
Motivation
Physical Exertion
Prospective Studies
Reward
English When humans and other animals make decisions in their natural environments prospective rewards have to be weighed against costs. It is well established that increasing costs lead to devaluation or discounting of reward. While our knowledge about discount functions for time and probability costs is quite advanced, little is known about how physical effort discounts reward. In the present study we compared three different models in a binary choice task in which human participants had to squeeze a handgrip to earn monetary rewards: a linear, a hyperbolic, and a parabolic model. On the group as well as the individual level, the concave parabolic model explained most variance of the choice data, thus contrasting with the typical hyperbolic discounting of reward value by delay. Research on effort discounting is not only important to basic science but also holds the potential to quantify aberrant motivational states in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/251559
Statistics
Document views: 15 File downloads: