[HN Gopher] How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioe...
___________________________________________________________________
How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic
background
Author : saikatsg
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-01-26 13:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| solardev wrote:
| This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
|
| I wonder if this has implications about the sense of agency
| people from different backgrounds feel (or not) in their lives.
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| In a capitalist society, class is the predominant relationship
| one has with their society.
|
| I know this is pretty obvious and may not entirely answer your
| question, but many people find it very difficult to swallow
| this reality these days and I think it's worth reminding.
| Frost1x wrote:
| To some degree, socioeconomic status likely dictates agency
| (the higher you are, the more agency you have in general). So,
| I imagine if the perceived agency is aligned with actual
| agency, you'd see the same.
|
| Now, in some respect everyone has the same amount of agency. No
| matter how rich or how poor one may be, they can tell the world
| to buzz off and do whatever they want to do, so in that sense
| they have the same agency. In reality, most people have an
| impulse to survive and meet those needs, like having food and
| so on, and people are cognizant of this fact. So unless you
| have the ability to provide all your needs, agency is mostly an
| illusion. Sure, you can do whatever you want but it's a lot
| easier if you have a pile of money to cover your whims. If you
| don't, well you might starve to death or die from some easily
| curable disease.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Quite the opposite, people who have grown up in rewarding
| environments tend to be more "ambitious" (my word, not theirs)
| because they have been conditioned to believe that ambition is
| rewarded.
|
| On the other hand, people who have grown up in poverty have
| been conditioned to believe that excellence doesn't really
| matter since there are few or no rewards to be had. Keep in
| mind, this is well below the level of conscious thought - it's
| a biological response.
|
| Once you remember that humans are animals and are conditioned
| by their environment the same way animals are, stimulus and
| response, everything about our modern civilization makes total
| sense.
| firtoz wrote:
| I wonder how this changes with spirituality background - e.g.
| with Buddhism, stoicism and so on.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| I think it changes significantly, since being spiritual is an
| effective way to rework and improve the inclinations that
| previous experiences have impressed upon a person. Although
| this study being focused on the reward response in 12-14 year
| olds is not going to be an assessment of that since the typical
| 12-14 year old doesn't even have a coherent comprehension of
| the basics of their spiritual text yet...
| firtoz wrote:
| My curiosity is from the expectation that various spiritual
| backgrounds (e.g. parents talking to their children about
| things) could allow the children to pay less importance on
| "worldly matters" and more on "being happy with what we
| have".
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| see also the anecdote of Diogenes and Alexander
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Obviously there is a startup market for spiritual texts that
| are comprehensible to the typical 12-14 year old; on these
| lines I would propose: - Party on -
| Be excellent to each other
|
| (the typical 12-14 may retain a naive interpretation of
| "party" and "excellent", but despite that caveat they ought
| to have a reasonably coherent comprehension of the text!)
| romaaeterna wrote:
| fMRI results show that children from lower-SES backgrounds are
| less stimulated by monetary rewards.
|
| "The findings suggest that lower SES circumstances may prompt the
| brain to adapt to the environment..."
|
| Wow! How did they control for the possibility that a heritable
| reward-focus in the parents leads to the SES results? Or that
| other factors, such as higher engagement or game-competence,
| might have led to this result? The story doesn't say, but if
| someone could post the relevant discussion from the journal
| article, I'd be interested in seeing it.
|
| I'm sure it's there.
| PeterisP wrote:
| They obviously didn't, and didn't need to - that sentence is
| not making any assertion, it is suggesting a hypothesis that
| can be tested in future work by them or others. The sole
| assertion this study is making is about the _existence_ of the
| effect, and it is only speculating (and not hiding that it 's
| speculating) about a possible mechanism causing that effect.
|
| And obviously further details relating to this observation
| aren't already tested and published, it would take at least a
| few months for that to happen - if someone had already done and
| published a follow-up analysis, this article wouldn't be news
| but be outdated already.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I agree that that sentence didn't, but further down in the
| article stronger claims are made, sometimes obliquely
| referencing prior work. So it would be interesting to see the
| original paper to see what they cite as supporting evidence
| for this hypothesis.
|
| Obviously this is something that can be controlled somewhat
| with the appropriate selection of subjects (there are a
| variety of families that have experienced generational rags-
| to-riches or riches-to-rags, for example). Though the N in
| those cases is likely to be smaller.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think a problem is that this press release is mixing
| content from the scientific study with an interview of
| experts talking about it, and the colloquial assertions
| made in that conversation happen to have a bunch of extra
| speculation that isn't part of the study they discuss; for
| half of the press release the "standard of evidence" is
| like in science and for the other half it is like in this
| HN discussion thread, where people do rise many interesting
| (and possibly true) hypotheses where we don't have any
| evidence (yet).
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I agree.
| itronitron wrote:
| A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more, say no
| more!
| roenxi wrote:
| And, indeed, makes for some rather interesting follow up
| questions...
|
| * Is this genuinely just a different way of processing
| rewards?
|
| * Do low SES children not understand that money is a reward?
|
| * Is there a capability gap at playing games? Or different
| responses to games themselves?
|
| I don't think it makes intuitive sense that limited rewards
| leads to a lower response, so my guess is low SES children
| probably have a different relationship with money. My
| observation has been, in a weird but important way, that only
| a subset of high SES families seem to treat money as a
| desirable thing. Most people seem to have a what I see as a
| complex love-hate-contempt relationship with money. There
| isn't conclusive evidence in the article though.
| nostromo wrote:
| Most of an individual's intelligence is inherited from their
| parents, and that's been proven multiple times with large-scale
| studies of adopted twins. It wouldn't surprise me if reward
| response was similar.
|
| But it's unlikely we'll make any advancements in our
| understanding of genes and intelligence or behavior, because
| this kind of research is out-of-favor and almost impossible to
| fund now.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Well, I think the issue isn't the research exactly, it's the
| motivations behind doing the research.
|
| Like, if it was determined tomorrow, with a huge article in
| nature or another journal that's suitably popular/prestigious
| that intelligence (and rewards for the sake of this thread)
| is totally inherited or even 80% inherited, what material
| changes would you want/expect to see in society in relation
| to that news.
| nostromo wrote:
| Because you end up with bad science, like (potentially) the
| study posted here. If you refuse to consider the role of
| genetics, then everything is going to look like
| environmental impacts.
|
| This has a real impact on policy and investment, because we
| waste time on money on programs that have no chance of
| success.
|
| Trying to remain ignorant isn't going to help us here, even
| if we have good intentions.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > because we waste time on money on programs that have no
| chance of success.
|
| And presumably learn from it. While wasting a lot of
| money and effort (and people) on programs that won't work
| isn't good, neither is not trying because the effect is
| presumed, pre hoc, to be small or non-existent.
|
| We live in a world where most people aren't enabled to
| achieve their potential. Figuring out that extrinsic
| rewards don't work to motivate behavioral changes or
| achievement for some people of a certain category,
| regardless of why, will hopefully result in the testing
| of other non-extrinsic-reward interventions that may work
| to motivate.
| concordDance wrote:
| > And presumably learn from it.
|
| While it might be easier than for regular people, it's
| still extremely hard for a politician/academic or
| political faction/academic faction to admit error. It's
| almost always possible to come up with a reason for why
| something didn't work that doesn't require giving up on a
| centrally important idea.
| pessimizer wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the reason why science is continually
| trying to prove black people inferior (let's not bury the
| lede) is in order to put the current condition of black
| people in America as a result of nature and not of hundreds
| of years of slavery and slave breeding, and of the current
| condition of black people in Africa to their inferior
| brains instead of the violent takeovers of their countries,
| mass enslavement and massacres, and the installation of
| friendly dictators to ship their resource wealth overseas.
|
| Normally you look for deficits in people in order to
| account for them with special help, but this is a science
| just looking to shed blame. It's like testing for dyslexia
| to find kids that you shouldn't bother trying to teach to
| read. Or even worse, retroactively justifying your decision
| not to teach redheaded kids how to read by doing a survey
| of redheaded kids who were never taught to read, over a
| dozen generations, and finding them stupid.
|
| That's the problem. The field is hopelessly tainted, and
| being an area that would be difficult under any
| circumstances (due to mass social effects rather than mass
| genetic effects), meaningful designs would be hard to find
| even if the researchers were motivated by something other
| than justifying the past.
|
| In my experience, the people most obsessed with arguing and
| proving the usefulness of IQ are somewhere between 110-120.
| The people obsessed with the heritability of IQ and the
| supposed dominance of nature over nurture are often people
| who have raised terrible children.
|
| aside: one thing I'm curious about and haven't found is
| that there are a number of researchers who show differences
| between American black achievement (slave descendants) and
| black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean (who started
| arriving in 1965.) I haven't seen a lot of race science
| speculating about that: did slavers (either Western or the
| Africans who sold them) have some sort of filter that only
| put the stupid blacks into slavery? Were all the smart ones
| culled, and/or their intelligence intentionally bred out of
| them over generations? Did the admixture of the genetics of
| so many white slavers into their slave stock lower slave
| intelligence, or raise their propensity to violence? Or
| does that entire line of inquiry (or intense study of slave
| breeding in general) hold no interest for people trying to
| justify 18th century race science?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The Caribbean has a history of slavery not unlike the
| U.S., so the fact that Caribbean immigrants are better
| off is genuinely interesting. Of course, institutional
| factors are the most likely difference; among other
| things, the British got rid of slavery a generation or so
| before the U.S. did, and there was no real equivalent
| there to the U.S. Civil War and failed Reconstruction.
| There are also cultural differences that will of course
| matter, but they're causally downstream of that basic
| stylized fact.
| concordDance wrote:
| > As far as I can tell, the reason why science is
| continually trying to prove black people inferior (let's
| not bury the lede) is in order to put the current
| condition of black people in America
|
| Wouldn't this only apply to research from the USA?
|
| My understanding is research from Nordic countries also
| indicates high heritability of IQ.
|
| > I haven't seen a lot of race science speculating about
| that
|
| Haven't looked in a few years, but I recall mention of
| selective immigration and culture as the causes. Yes, the
| latter kinda runs counter to the whole "It's all down to
| genes!" trend, but most seem to not go full "it's 100%
| genes" and instead say "it's mostly genes" to give
| themselves some wiggle room.
| concordDance wrote:
| > what material changes would you want/expect to see in
| society in relation to that news.
|
| Governments offering free embryo selection plausibly.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Unfortunately the field of observational statistics called
| "psychometrics" which has "proved" this using "twin studies"
| is largely bunk.
|
| The premise of those studies is linear additive effects from
| each causal factor, which is almost certainly false; and in
| general, there is no way of establishing causation without
| interventional experiments. If the effects were plausibly
| non-linear, we would need 1 trillion+ data points even to
| establish statistically significant differences.
|
| These fields are all cargo-cult stats, putting data into GUIs
| and printing pro-forma reports. The people involved are in
| way over their heads, to the degree that there isnt anything
| to "reproduce" let alone try to reproduce the experiments:
| they dont have any.
|
| The whole thing is little more than principle component
| analysis on astrological star data.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > The whole thing is little more than principle component
| analysis on astrological star data.
|
| When and where we are born definitely has an effect on
| personality, irrespective of family, in most cases.
| Astrological star data is a proxy for the when and where,
| and while thus would not be causative, would often be
| correlative. So it makes sense to do PCA on it as you'll
| identify a lot of good correlations.
| mjburgess wrote:
| You are correct that star positions are proxies. The
| problem in the case of psychometrics is that the claim is
| that the stars (here: genes) arent proxies, but bonafide
| causes.
|
| So in the case of astrological analysis we would, if we
| wished to change population personalities change, say
| where people were born -- in the case of psychometrics
| we're told that we have no control over the causes
| whatsoever (genes).
|
| In the vast vast majority of observational genetic
| studies genes are just proxies, in the the same way the
| star signs are. In other cases, they're mere
| correlations.
|
| In the case of IQ (and basically all social genetic
| studies) it is highly likely that any correlated genes
| are merely proxies for geographic-historical
| distributions of peoples over time and it was the long-
| time-scale geographic and historical effects (culture,
| education, wealth, famine, poverty, war...) that we see
| in attainment.
|
| (Setting aside that IQ tests aren't valid above average
| IQ and have extremely bad properties both at the
| individual and population level for most of the measured
| range. )
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| We do know that genes are a cause of IQ (we can see this
| comparing our nearest non-Homo relatives. But yes, we are
| far away from saying which genes do cause it, much less
| how they cause it, and how they interact with the
| environment and other genes to cause it.
| mjburgess wrote:
| IQ is a test, it isnt intelligence and isnt even a
| measure of intelligence. It is valid only for
| establishing certain sorts of mental retardation in a
| human population.
|
| To say that "genes cause IQ" is several levels of
| confusion. The claim has nothing to do with whether genes
| determine the physiological body structure, the claim is
| whether relevant aspects of human intelligence are a
| product of the at-birth or developmental structure -- or
| of that acquired from the environemnt, ie., neural
| plasticity / brain structure / etc.
|
| Almost all evidence we have is that relevant aspects of
| human intelligence are environmental, ie., acquired.
| There is little evidence of the alternative because the
| experiments needed to establish it are large impossible
| or unethical. So it might be true, but we have no
| evidence of it.
|
| Insofar as any claims are made about genes and IQ they
| amount to associating markers of geographical-historical
| migration (ie., breeding across time) with a very bad
| proxy measure of abstract reasoning which, at best, only
| detects deficits with any reliabiliy.
|
| So we have proxies on top of correlations on top of
| terrible measures of anything with zero reliability in
| the range of interest. This whole thing is operating
| nearly at fraudulent levels of "research".
|
| There's very very little this field can say
| scientifically, since there arent any experiments. It's
| all pseudoscientific uses of stats.
|
| To simplify matters, suppose that we know for sure that
| all above-average differences in IQ are 100%
| environmental/acquired-during-lifetime. Now, so what do
| twin studies show, on this assumption?
|
| They show that genes must be correlating with these
| environmental measures, and twin studies give us an
| 'effect size' for geographical-historical patterns of
| reporduction.
|
| So twin studies, even if they were valid (and their
| assumption of linearity renders them invalid), do not
| decide the matter. You need indpednent evidence of causal
| mechanisms from experiments, which doesnt exist.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > IQ is a test, it isnt intelligence and isnt even a
| measure of intelligence.
|
| Are you sure about that? If I find someone that we all
| agree is "pretty damn smart" and they regularly score
| 115+ and we find someone that we all agree is "not very
| smart at all" and they regularly score < 90. And we
| repeat that dozens of times, it seems like the IQ test is
| a measure of intelligence.
|
| It may be imperfect, and pretty clearly does not have
| three significant digits of precision, but it seems it's
| still a measure of the thing we're trying to estimate,
| same as a set of mixed stones and a playground seesaw can
| provide a comparative measure of weight.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Er, sure, if you can define some objective measures of
| performance that are taken to be symptomatic of
| intelligence and correlate those with IQ test results --
| and then show test-retest validity across a wide
| population (etc. etc.), then you'd have a case.
|
| But all attempts to do this, i'm aware of, show in fact
| IQ tests don't behave this way. That all correlation with
| objective measures of performs, with reliable measures,
| end up random >100 -- and weakly non-random <100.
|
| So what we, in fact find, is that IQ tests only reliably
| correlate in the 'mental retardation' region of
| performance.
|
| There is, possibly, a sort of non-objective culturally
| feeling to the kinds of people who might do well on IQ
| tests. Call these personalities, "puzzler bureaucrats" it
| isnt clear that even for people in this population we're
| percing any sort of objective intelligence-related
| performance.
|
| Eg., suppose we had an objective measure of intelligence
| based on a deep causal model of the brain and how it
| interacts with body/environment. Suppose we found out
| that a population who score 100-110 on IQ tests were
| vastly more intelligent than another scoring 120-130.
|
| Now, could we find independent measures of performance to
| substantiate that? Yes, trivially. Take, eg., a group of
| CEOs and a group of maths undergrads. The former, could
| by supposition, have a much higher performance on a
| variety of objective measures.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > So what we, in fact find, is that IQ tests only
| reliably correlate in the 'mental retardation' region of
| performance.
|
| Even assuming we agree that that's the only usefulness of
| an IQ test, in what way does that make them not _a
| measure_ of intelligence?
|
| A ruler is still a measure of length even if it can't
| measure the size of an atom or the distance to the moon.
| mjburgess wrote:
| It's more like a binary classifier: retarded, not-
| retarded.
| concordDance wrote:
| > The premise of those studies is linear additive effects
| from each causal factor
|
| I don't understand this. Why would you need linear additive
| effects to think that if identical twins are more similar
| than fraternal twins and half siblings are less similar
| than full siblings along some axis then there is probably a
| genetic component?
| concordDance wrote:
| > Most of an individual's intelligence is inherited from
| their parents
|
| Note that heritability numbers are specific to a particular
| environment. E.g. if you have a more random environment with
| some kids exposed to lead poisoning, some to malnourishment
| and some to parasites you will get lower heritability
| figures.
|
| Most studies on this are conducted in countries like Sweden
| and the USA on middle class populations.
| dusted wrote:
| This was my thought too, ofc. it's not a popular idea these
| days that genetics and heredity might have some bearing on
| success, but it does seem worthwhile looking into..
|
| Anecdote time, I identified the reward-seeking behaviour in my
| peers in early childhood and didn't understand it, I felt they
| were acting like dogs, being overtly manipulated to do what the
| grownups wanted, and I felt disgusted with the idea. (I was not
| an easy child, but then again, I grew up to be a rather
| disagreeable adult)
|
| I come from a fairly normal lower middle-class family, but was
| consistently rewarded, except my response to praise and reward
| was mostly negative, and to some degree still is. I'm pretty
| sure my father was the same way, he'd do stuff for their own
| sake and his own sake, not because someone rewarded him for it.
| Unsurprisingly, taking into account how much potential I've
| been told I have, I'm a relatively low achiever, I'm simply not
| attracted to reward or winning very much, except maybe winning
| for its own sake, which just seems dumb.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Looking into? Sure! Claiming that it's already established
| science when it absolutely isn't however...
| baronswindle wrote:
| It wasn't clear to me from the article itself, but for those
| familiar with research in this area: has anybody attempted to
| disentangle differences caused by genetics vs. by environment per
| se?
| AymanB wrote:
| This is really interesting
| qprofyeh wrote:
| So put plainly, hire people who come from low income families
| because they appreciate rewards more, and stay hungry for longer.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Are you saying it'd be good to take it further... e.g. increase
| taxes so we have more hungry, appreciative people. Would we
| have better companies and economy if this was applied to
| corporate officers?
| qprofyeh wrote:
| What? No I did not.
|
| I am saying give the same opportunities to people from lesser
| social backgrounds. They will not disappoint.
| roughly wrote:
| Article states the opposite - people from low income families
| react to rewards less than those from higher income families.
| Avicebron wrote:
| So theoretically then they would be more level headed
| employees, and might not have as strong inclination to harm
| others with their seeking of SES. e.g. the reward stimulus of
| money is lessened so the negative externality of harm is a
| stronger counterbalance?
| qprofyeh wrote:
| We read the same article. I interpret less reaction to
| rewards as being more appreciative. It's deep, but hear me
| out. Less reaction means they (and myself included once) have
| the same expectation as the ones giving the reward, it being
| an equilibrium. Because the rewards match the expectation
| over a longer period of time, that's why they (again, from
| personal experience) stay hungry for a longer period of time.
| It will take much longer for a smart poor person to really
| think they've made it to the other side permanently.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| No. 1. Don't play with people. 2. Be honest and fair. 3. Hire
| people who follow those points.
|
| I'm a fan of Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards
| nradov wrote:
| These findings may be somewhat particular to just money. One
| pernicious part of growing up poor is that the moment a child
| gets a bit of money it is taken away. Parents might seize the
| money to help the family, or other friends and relatives might
| guilt them into a "loan". It would be interesting to see if the
| experiment is reproducible with other rewards that are more
| durable or harder to take away from the subjects.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > One pernicious part of growing up poor is that the moment a
| child gets a bit of money it is taken away.
|
| A lesson I've not forgotten to this day. A family member set up
| a deal where me and my sisters had to feed three pigs for a
| period and look after them, the reward? The money when the
| little piggies were eventually sold.
|
| And so we did, and we did it well, and were excited, as we'd
| never had money before due to how poor we were.
|
| When the time came, our parents instead took the money, and
| told us they were entitled to it, and that we should be more
| grateful as it wa s our fault in the first place we had very
| little money and that we should think of this as doing our bit
| to pay a bit of that back. We were like...10-12.
|
| That lived with me for a very long time.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > The findings suggest that lower SES circumstances may prompt
| the brain to adapt to the environment by dampening its response
| to rewards, which are often scarcer in low SES environments.
|
| or alternatively, many mundane things are suddenly consequential
| things and rewarding? and this game lacked stimulation because it
| was inconsequential?
| gumby wrote:
| This is counter to how I would have guessed, which makes it quite
| interesting!
|
| To those complaining that the results are non-determinative (e.g.
| "they didn't disentangle genetics from social issues") that's how
| science works: do some studies, make or evaluate a hypothesis,
| then you or others iterate on different dimensions, possibly
| untangling some variables or even refuting the results of such a
| study. It's OK to be where it is at this stage.
|
| Of course it's hard to incorporate that ambiguity into a regular
| article, especially when you are writing for the university's
| publicity office, which is what "MIT News" is.
| roughly wrote:
| Also, "they didn't disentangle genetics from social issues" is
| a bit aside from the point: someone born into a lower SES
| family faces an additional challenge to achieving and
| maintaining success, be that learned or born. Childhood
| circumstances can have lifelong effects in the same way that
| genetics can.
|
| Now, combine that with all of the other things we do know are
| SES (nutrition, access to resources like tutors, lifestyle &
| residential stability, etc, which seem quite difficult to
| ascribe to genetics)...
| baronswindle wrote:
| To be clear, I wasn't complaining. I was asking a question.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| I likewise had the opposite intuition: low SES brains will have
| higher reward response to make the most out of fewer
| opportunities. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em. That would track nicely
| with the erratic, easily distractible ADHD behavior that began
| in my childhood.
|
| Oh well. To quote The FairlyOdd Parents: "You win some, you
| lose a lot!"
| luxuryballs wrote:
| did they control for nutritional availability during growth &
| development?
| gmd63 wrote:
| People in lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have
| experienced more depressing life events, dampening their brain
| activity in general
| narag wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, but that's not what
| I believe "reward" means.
|
| When guessing, you're not making any effort, it's just random,
| nothing to do with "agency" or behaviour. It's just a lottery and
| the result is just logical: in the house of the poor, happiness
| is short-lived.
| santoshalper wrote:
| They intentionally chose a game of chance to eliminate
| motivation driven by an inherent desire to perform well at a
| task, isolated from the reward. Their goal was to isolate the
| response to the extrinsic reward (prize), vs. people who just
| enjoy doing well at things.
| almostnormal wrote:
| A dollar is not a dollar. A dollar is something different for
| kids than it is for their parents. A dollar for a kid of rich
| patents is not the same as a dollar for a kid of poorer parents.
|
| Poorer parents likely try to keep worries about money as far from
| their kids as they can, even if not easy. Rich parents might
| casually discuss investment ideas at a common dinner.
|
| As a result a dollar may be seen much more as a reward by kids of
| rich parents than by kids of poor parents.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Anecdotal obviously, but mine made no such attempt. I was
| reminded constantly of our financial situation and furthermore,
| was normally informed through various means how it was my fault
| for one reason or another. Yay.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| DNA isn't all that matters, but it matters more than everything
| else put together.
| iinnPP wrote:
| Perhaps today, maybe not tomorrow.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| Great point! If we're lucky!
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I read a quote once that said something like.
|
| "The main issue with modern psychology is that we have reams and
| reams of data and experiments on rich, white, college age people
| but nothing else. This data is the foundation of most psychology
| teachings."
|
| Another meaningless study of rich white people is what this
| sounds like. Yeah of course a bunch of rich college people have
| been taught to value climbing the social ladder right in front of
| them the few remaining rungs to the top. When you are poor and
| realize you have to climb a mountain first to even get to the
| ladder the incremental rewards are not as important as the
| resilience to getting knocked back down again and again.
| semanticjudo wrote:
| Did you bother reading it?
|
| "Historically, many studies have involved the easiest people to
| recruit, who tend to be people who come from advantaged
| environments. If we don't make efforts to recruit diverse pools
| of participants, we almost always end up with children and
| adults who come from high-income, high-education environments,"
| Gabrieli says. "Until recently, we did not realize that
| principles of brain development vary in relation to the
| environment in which one grows up, and there was very little
| evidence about the influence of SES."
|
| Without this very type of study one could mistakenly do exactly
| what you're accusing them of doing. I also didn't see race
| mentioned. I'd assume the opposite of your presumption i.e.
| that this finding would stand regardless of race.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I stopped reading at
|
| >They were told that for each correct guess, they would earn
| an extra dollar, and for each incorrect guess, they would
| lose 50 cents.
|
| Its been proven time and again that these meaningless level
| rewards are pointless in studies and often even distort/bias
| the data (people treat it like a board game). Probably only
| second to people not considering SES even when they are
| studing SES.
|
| I am more interested in reading about debunked studies rather
| than new ones, as you can tell I have a huge general
| assumption that they will be poorly performed.
|
| I guess the one thing that was also left out from my comment
| was also that most of these experiments are carried out by
| college age undergrads that are rich (and still mostly
| white).
|
| Yeah they are "overseen" by someone with a PHD.... who
| depends on getting as many papers as possible published.
| Which is another issue. As I said I obviously have some
| serious bias against the validity of most "social science"
| semanticjudo wrote:
| > Its been proven time and again that these meaningless
| level rewards are pointless in studies and often even
| distort/bias the data (people treat it like a board game).
|
| Do you have one or two references for this I could take a
| look at?
|
| I'm as wary of bias and mistakes in research as "the next
| person" but if they are measuring brain activity it gets
| more interesting. To establish that there isn't some
| validity to this experiment then one would have to show
| that the brain's reward center can respond while receiving
| a reward while playing a game but not respond when
| receiving a reward in a different "non-game" context.
|
| If such research exists or it's been established as fact
| that this is true, that would seem like a glaring omission
| from this study. I'd be interested to see that.
|
| Secondarily, you avoided addressing the race question
| entirely :) I'll assume it is safe to say there is some
| bias there as well then.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| It's all so tiresome
| elzbardico wrote:
| Probably because when you are poor you learn that reward is not
| going to be consistent. Your parents may love you as much as
| possible, but they don't have the resources to consistently
| reward you.
|
| Your teachers might be the most caring education professionals
| ever, but in your poor district, there's no much they can do
| consistently.
|
| So, basically your brain probably says to you: Don't get over-
| excited with this, this is probably a one-of-thing.
| dmurray wrote:
| But we learn in Psychology 101 that intermittent reward is
| actually the most motivating, and produces the best results for
| mice and pigeons and dogs and humans. So this theory would make
| the poor kids more successful.
| kkarakk wrote:
| intermittent reinforcement is focused on providing motivation
| when the person needs it - based on some intrinsic
| understanding of the effort's stressors - instead of
| rewarding the effort itself.
|
| poorer background kids tend get rewards at random intervals
| not intermittent intervals.
|
| this is - as a contrasting example - what pushes them to
| "hustle" culture instead which does reward effort and in
| addition has intermittent reinforcement with bigger rewards
| from people who are entrenched in the culture and see a
| performer who needs motivation.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| "Best" as most addictive. Intermittent reward might meant
| that the world and their cues are not reliable.
|
| Children are slightly more intelligent than doves, so
| expecting us to behave like winged rats is both reductionist
| and insulting
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