The Motivating-Uncertainty Effect builds better habits?

Expanded and edited from a contribution I made to an OpenIDEO challenge

The team over at Cognitive Lode have a great writeup on how uncertain rewards might actually boost motivation towards a goal. Additional findings indicate that this strategy might in fact help deepen habits resulting from that goal. I've been investigating how this approach might relate a health-focused habit-building app.

A key takeaway from the article:

"[An uncertain reward] provides a more sustainable way to be healthy: Focusing on the journey rather than the destination seems to be a better way of staying on track and motivated: The feeling is the goal."

For example, one strategy we've explored centers on rewarding an individual with a concrete reward up front, something to start the habit, and following that with an uncertain reward: "you've logged your first three days of drinking more water! Here's a reward for your hard work. Log ten more days and we'll send you another reward—but the details are a secret, you'll have just have to find out ;)"

However, this runs contrary to ideas surrounding uncertainty avoidance and ambiguity aversion, as it is commonly believed that most people find any amount of uncertanty to contain some degree of risk. Perhaps this is the balancing act: finding a point where the lowest possible reward leave little enough risk that the individual still gladly accepts that risk. Or perhaps there's another mechinism at work, one that overrides an individual's risk aversion.

We have yet to move this into actual user testing, but the initial exploration is showing promise. Of note if the point that this works better with smaller rewards, meaning you could potentially make a limited reward budget (or even no-value rewards) go significantly further.