Variability evident in human studies of taste is recognized as a substantial obstacle to a precise understanding of the relationship between tastant receptor activity and resulting taste response. There are many potential sources of variability given that experimental control over human subject-dependent variables is limited. However, one controllable variable in human studies that largely has been overlooked is incentive structure in the experimental design. Generally, subjects are remunerated for their participation in a taste study, but no consequences are associated with their responses during a test. We have developed a technology and associated methodology by which subject performance in taste testing is incentivized through gamification. The approach is based on operant taste discrimination, where consequences are directly and immediately tied to a subject’s response on each trial. Under these conditions, responses that accurately identify standard control stimuli are rewarded, and errors penalized, on a trial-by-trial basis. Subjects accumulate a score translated to a monetary value as the session progresses automatically through 96 trials, and the final amount at the session’s end is immediately deposited to a PayPal account. By this approach, subjects attain a high degree of taste acuity that is consistently recorded across tests with low variability. Rapid throughput automation of the technology permits collection of large datasets from each subject, further reducing variability. Results from extensive testing using this technology will be presented, reflecting a close correspondence with pharmacological predictions of underlying receptor activity.