Behavior Modification
Intermittent rewards can make a learned behavior persist after rewards stop. The passage uses a rat pressing a lever to explain how rewards, expectations, and uncertainty influence what people or animals continue to do.
THE IDEA
Behavior modification
Behaviors can be a response to both internal and external factors. The studies described here concern intermittent reinforcement: rewarding a behavior on some occasions can make it persist longer after rewards stop than rewarding it every time.
A rat learns that a certain lever will sometimes produce food. It’s always the same lever, but it doesn’t always have food. The rat will continue to press that lever for far longer after food is no longer given than a lever that always gave food then one day just stopped.
Our behavior changes based on both actual reward and punishment and our perceptions of it. If something we did resulted in something good, just the anticipation of having that good thing again is an incentive to repeat the behavior. Same goes with a negative experience. Just the possibility of a repeat of punishment makes us want to avoid similar situations in the future.
The ability to store things such as fat or food gives us flexibility in responding to incentives. Money can be thought of as a form of storage—all the potential purchasing power is stored until used to buy things. “Perhaps the greatest economic innovation in human society was the invention of money, an exchangeable commodity that in effect stores the power to purchase and sell goods.”2 This is part of money’s incentive. You can choose how and when to spend it, and saving it means that you aren’t as vulnerable to having to adjust and respond to every minor or risky incentive that comes your way.
The discovery and reinforcement of a certain incentive can change our behavior. Like helping to build the mechanisms that allow elephants to remember how and where to find water over vast distances, we can create new neural pathways when obtaining rewards. Uncertain incentives, as well, can be beneficial to survival. Through studies of gambling or loyalty programs, researchers speculate that a tolerance for uncertain incentives is necessary because so many of our attempts to achieve something new fail on the first few tries.
The passage also connects reinforcement with addiction, distinguishing pursuit of a drug from the pleasure of taking it. A person may continue seeking a drug even when the experience is no longer as pleasurable. This illustrates why persistence of a behavior is not, by itself, evidence that the behavior remains rewarding in the ordinary sense.
When to use it
Evaluating how an employee reward system affects behavior while rewards are offered and after they stop.
Creating habit-forming apps by providing random rewards like surprise discounts or badges.
Examining how expectations and cues sustain a repeated behavior, rather than assuming it continues only because it is enjoyable.
Observing which rewards sustain a habit and whether it persists when rewards become less frequent.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Rat lever experiment
A rat learns that pressing a lever sometimes produces food. Even after food stops, the rat continues pressing the lever longer than if food was always given, demonstrating the power of intermittent reinforcement.
Gambling and loyalty programs
The authors discuss uncertain rewards in gambling and loyalty programs, and a proposed connection with persistence through unsuccessful attempts. That evolutionary explanation is presented as a hypothesis, rather than something these programs establish.
Drug addiction
The passage uses addiction to distinguish wanting a drug from enjoying its effects. Repeated pursuit can persist even as pleasure declines; this is an illustration of reinforcement, rather than a complete account of addiction.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How have intermittent rewards shaped your own habits, such as checking social media or gambling?
Can you identify a situation where a small, uncertain reward motivated you more than a guaranteed larger reward?
How might you use the principle of variable reinforcement to encourage a positive behavior in yourself or others?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Great Mental Models Volume 2 Physics, Chemistry and Biology