⚙️ Why Rewards Are More Gratifying When You Work for Them
New research compares how high vs low cognitive effort impacts the intensity of rewards
Many of life’s rewards fall into two possible categories:
The rewards you earn through effort
The rewards you stumble upon through chance
When you spend years working on a passion project from scratch, and things finally start to pay off after unlocking new progress, that’s a win you achieved through dedicated effort. If you’re lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, and your parents invest upfront in your dream ambition, that gives you a head start in life thanks to chance.
Neither of these is necessarily a bad thing. Some of us are luckier than others, but all of our lives contain examples of rewards we’ve earned and rewards we’ve chanced upon.
I’ve often heard advice suggesting that a reward means more to you when you feel you’ve earned it. I’ve always taken this with a grain of salt, not because it’s obviously incorrect, but because it sounds like vacuous “good vibes” advice that can’t be absorbed for more than a few seconds. If I won the lottery tomorrow, would there really be a hint of disappointment in the fact that I didn’t earn it?
As it turns out, new research suggests I should have given my advisors more credit.
🍩 How effort amplifies reward
In a paper published in October 2024, researchers ran two studies on how effort impacts the intensity of rewards: one study with rats and another with humans.
For their first study, the researchers created a task for rats that forced either high or low cognitive effort.
In the high-effort task, rats learned to pull one of two levers, but the rule for which lever was correct kept changing. Sometimes they had to pull the lever indicated by a light while at other times they had to pull a pre-selected lever regardless of which light appeared. Since there was no warning about the rule change, cognitive effort was required to keep monitoring which rule was active.
In the low-effort task, rats could pull any lever they wanted to receive a food pellet. Since they didn’t need to work out rules, the task was easy.
Right after completing their tasks, rats could self-administer cocaine voluntarily as a reward.
The researchers found that rats administered significantly more cocaine after high compared to low cognitive effort. Rats that completed the high-effort task took approximately twice as many cocaine injections as rats that completed the low-effort task.
The same pattern didn’t emerge when rats had the option of self-administering a plain old saline solution instead of cocaine. Rats administered the same amount of saline regardless of how effortful their cognitive task was. Effort only mattered when rats had the option of self-administering a reward following their task.
That’s all well and good for rats, but what happens among humans? The researchers asked 148 students to write a list of all their thoughts for 6 minutes. In the high-effort condition, students had to do this after being explicitly told it was forbidden to think of a white bear. In the low-effort condition, students were told it was perfectly fine to think of a white bear.
After this task, students were given a bag of potato chips and told to eat as many as they wished in order to “accurately judge the taste, smell, and texture of the chips”. This was actually a cover story for the real aim of the study which was to test how many chips they would eat after exerting high or low cognitive effort.
Participants who completed the high-effort task ate significantly more potato chips than participants who completed the low-effort task. When measuring by grams, the high-effort students ate 29% more potato chips. They also reported enjoying the potato chips more.
And once again, as with the rats, the way participants perceived neutral non-rewarding objects did not change based on their cognitive effort; only rewards mattered. After engaging in a period of effortful cognitive activity, rewards felt more pleasurable, and people wanted more of them.
The researchers primarily interpret these findings through the lens of overconsumption: when we work hard, we’re at higher risk of an excessive desire for rewards that may not be entirely good for us like unhealthy but tasty food. These kinds of self-control failures might then lay the groundwork for addiction.
But going back to my intro, there is another more optimistic way to think about this. Rewards are great, but they’re particularly great when we’ve worked hard for them. Winning $100k in the lottery might be cause for celebration, but it doesn’t have the same sense of accomplishment, gratification, and jubilant success that comes with earning that money from an ambitious project that we personally muscled through.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
#1. The rewards we find are more meaningful than the rewards that find us
When it comes to unlocking life’s joys, there’s no replacement for putting in the effort to actively discover them for ourselves. It can feel unfair when other people are born with advantages that we are struggling to access, but there’s a lot we gain from the learning and energy involved in those struggles. Celebrate every reward that you earn—even the tiny ones—and try not to compare yourself to others since everybody has their own unique set of circumstances.
#2. Choose healthy rewards
One way to avoid the possible risks of overconsumption or addiction is to choose healthy over unhealthy rewards. I don’t expect many of you are using cocaine as your regular reward, but if food is your thing, perhaps celebrating small wins with your favorite fruit instead of your favorite chocolate could help.
#3. Consider whether immediate or delayed reward is better in each situation
One finding from the rat study I didn’t mention is that when researchers introduced a long delay before offering cocaine rewards for hard work, it canceled out or even reversed the effect of extra reward consumption. This suggests that delayed reward doesn’t have the same impact as immediate reward after a hard day’s work. This could be a good or a bad thing. When you’re celebrating socially with friends or with healthy treats, it’s best to do it as soon as possible to make it a more joyous occasion. On the other hand, when the reward is less salutary—maybe the new chocolate box or a trip to Las Vegas casinos—a delay can give you the cool-headed appreciation you need to stay balanced.
“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.”
~ Benjamin Disraeli