Behavioral science has assumed that reward which is not innate is a soft currency that must be backed by the hard currency of an innately rewarding process somewhere in prospect. However, hyperbolic delay discount curves predict that there can be arbitrarily self-generated reward, which may be not only robust but addictive. Such endogenous reward depends on the appetite for it, and therefore becomes intense when occasioned by signals that are adequately singular and surprising. Because signals are often singular because they predict innate rewards, it may be hard to distinguish this predictive value from their hedonic value as occasions for endogenous reward. The conflict between an instrumental incentive to accelerate rewarding events and a hedonic incentive to refresh appetite may motivate indirect approaches to these events, which maximize these events’ total reward by creating obstacles to them. Gambling is offered as an example.
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