Effort makes the reward sweeter and the landscape more beautiful

We want to naturally conserves energy and avoids effort, but the human species would not have gotten very far with this attitude.

So evolution has created a mechanism that rewards effort.

“If you achieve something through effort, it often feels better than if you got the same reward without effort. The view from the top of the mountain looks different if you have climbed it with effort than if you had gone on a cable car,” says the Stanford University brain researcher Neir Eshel In the Nature magazine podcast.

The phenomenon has been observed not only in humans but also in birds, rodents and even ants.

Eshel and partners have previously shown that dopamine, a brain neurotransmitter associated with motivation, is released more from a reward after effort than from a similar reward obtained with little effort.

But how does dopamine know that work has been done for the reward?

Published in the new journal Nature in his research the team shows in mice that another brain neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, is involved.

When mice have to work harder for a sugary treat, the amount of acetylcholine increases as the effort progresses in the nucleus accumbens, part of the brain’s reward system.

After a long effort, the nub is literally bathed in acetylcholine. It, in turn, triggers a strong release of dopamine when the reward finally falls.

Published in Tiede magazine 4/2026.