Immediate versus delayed reward in pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer

Abstract

There is a growing interest in eating behaviour, partly caused by an increase in people with obesity. A ‘toxic environment’ plays a role in the increase in the increase in obesity rates. Multiple articles have demonstrated the effects of food rewards on eating behaviour. However, a distinction between an immediate food reward and a delayed food reward has not been made yet. Therefore, in this study, an experiment will be conducted, using the interference paradigm, to measure whether there is a PIT-effect present for immediate and delayed food rewards. The experiment was conducted among 51 students who had to perform a computer task. A questionnaire was also presented, measuring motivation. A reliability analysis was performed for the questionnaire and multiple repeated measure ANOVA’s were performed on the data collected by the computer task and the questionnaire. Furthermore, an exploratory simple effect analysis was performed to look more into the interaction effect. The findings suggest that there is evidence for the presence of the PIT-effect in immediate versus delayed food rewards and that motivation plays a role when participants receive the immediate reward. However, to support this evidence, future research on immediate versus delayed food rewards needs to be done. The theoretical implication is that predict delayed rewards have no interference with our current activities. The practical implication could be that eating unhealthy and tempting food is planned for a later moment in such a way that cues in the toxic environment have less impact on our activities.