Beyond delay: Discounting rewards for self-control

Yet, achieving many long-term health goals also requires continuously exerting self-control while forgoing an immediately rewarding alternative. To quantify these subjective costs, we introduced a novel abstinence discounting paradigm and tested it in a consequential context: nicotine use.

Abstinence discounting assessed one’s preference for larger monetary rewards contingent on maintaining nicotine abstinence versus smaller, noncontingent monetary rewards that do not require abstinence.</p>