Payment and value: The generation of an evaluation standard and its effect on value

Three studies explored the relationship between the reward that individuals receive for engaging in an activity and the value that they subsequently place on that activity. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects engaged in an activity more when they had previously received a moderate amount of reward than when they had received either a small or a large reward. Experiment 3 indicated that the shape of this function was determined, in part, by the value the activity had before the reward was give. These results, coupled with those of previous studies in the effort justification paradigm, suggest that reward and cost can influence activity value similarly, through the operation of simple comparison processes as predicted by personal comparison theory. Implications for social judgment, associative, self-perception, and dissonance perspectives were discussed.