People Prefer Instant Gratification Over Larger, Delayed Rewards

New findings published in the journal Biological Psychiatry show that Dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain that is most closely associated with pleasure and reward, showed just how much people push for instant gratification. 

In other words, the study results revealed that many crave the thrill out of smaller immediate rewards as opposed to larger delayed ones.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Stanford University used rodent models to examine the role of the neurotransmitter in dynamically tracking specific elements of value-based decision making.

They trained the rats to pick between two different options, including a small sweet reward that could be eaten right away or a bigger one that was delivered at varying delays.

"We found that dopamine signaled the more preferred option; more dopamine was observed for cues signaling immediate large rewards, but this declined as the delay to the large reward increased," said Senior author Dr. Regina Carelli, in a news release.

Furthermore, researchers discovered that the shift in dopamine release and an associated tendency to pick smaller, immediate rewards throughout larger delayed rewards was consistent with the phenomenon of delay discounting. 

Afterwards, researchers controlled the activity of dopamine neurons with the help of cues that signaled large or delayed rewards using techniques known as optogenetics in a second set of rats. From there, the experiment revealed that ‘playing back' the patterns of dopamine release could be observed in the first set of rats, with researchers bias toward making different decisions in the future.

"These exciting new findings suggest that dopamine plays a sophisticated role in helping to guide specific aspects of decision-making behavior," Carelli concluded.