Player behaviour: path of least resistance

Been kicking myself to post something but have generally been on a bit of a hiatus so i don't have much to write about, thought it might be worth discussing something thats quite easy to observe and talk about how it relates to adventure/dungeon design.

Simply place a normal 10ft wide corridor in front of your players next to a 5ft wide crawlspace and see which one they go for, its pretty likely that they will go for the normal 10ft wide corridor, awhile ago i had a similar situation in a dungeon i ran, part of it was accessible either through crawling through giant rat tunnels or via a locked and trapped door, unsurprisingly the players didn't choose this option and explored other areas of the dungeon even going to the second floor of the dungeon, there are obvious disadvantages to picking the harder path and no obvious benefit most players want to win after all.

This somewhat relates to a conversation i had with another DM about the dungeon design where he said that he often makes use of such path options and usually has easier encounters on the harder(in the sense of navigation) and harder encounters on the more normal path, this gives a very important risk vs reward situation, i can say that in the dungeon example i mentioned above nothing in that unexplored area was particularly difficult nor lacking in treasure.

I think if players had some hint that the harder path was just as or more profitable than the easy one it would change the way they consider such obstacles and may encourage more daring feats, an idea I've had linked to another dungeon I've been spit balling is a heavy gold idol at the bottom of a deep pit filled with water, the idol will sparkle in the torch light and have no hazards apart from its weight and the water, though not something the players might retrieve on a first delve it could encourage future delves of the same site with a clear payoff and maby even lead to additional submerged areas nearby to explore, 

This has largely been rambling but i don't want to fall too far behind on blog posting as its just going to get harder to get back into the longer i wait, i hope theres something you've found useful in this post and I'll try to write again soon 

MC