Generic overjustification: The interaction of extrinsic rewards

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that the value of one extrinsic reward will be undermined when another extrinsic reward is made contingent upon the same activity. Subjects were assigned to one of three experimental groups. Some were paid a contingent monetary reward for engaging in a monotonous and boring activity and were then given the opportunity to continue to work voluntarily for additional payment. Others were given both money and extra experimental credit for the required task, and were likewise offered additional pay for voluntary extra work. A third group of subjects received money for the required task, but were given no additional rewards for extra work. It was observed that the money + credit subjects did less extra work for pay than the money-only subjects. They also rated the monetary reward as having been of less value to them. Subjects who were paid during the initial task session but not for extra work did less additional work than those who were paid in both sessions, but did not differ in their ratings of the value of the monetary reward. It is concluded that extrinsic rewards are nonadditive, and that current models of undermined rewards are too limited to account for this phenomenon. A selective attention hypothesis is advanced as an alternative.     

外在奖赏对陈述性记忆的影响

学习和记忆是个体赖以生存和发展的前提,如何取得好的学习和记忆效果是心理学和神经科学关注的重点。近年来,许多研究揭示奖赏可以促进记忆效果,奖赏对记忆的影响逐渐成为心理学和神经科学的热点研究课题。大脑的中脑多巴胺奖赏系统与海马记忆系统在结构和功能上均有关联。奖赏通过编码和巩固阶段以不同机制对记忆效果产生作用：在记忆编码阶段,奖赏会激活奖赏系统、注意控制系统,将更多认知资源分配给奖赏相关信息,从而促进奖赏信息的记忆效果;在记忆巩固阶段,奖赏会促进多巴胺释放,作用于海马对奖赏相关信息的加工,从而促进奖赏信息的记忆效果。未来研究可以关注奖赏对行为影响的复杂模式和内在奖赏对学习记忆的影响等方面。     

The development of prudence in the face of varying future rewards

The choice to delay gratification, opting for a greater reward later instead of a smaller reward now, has been used as a measure of preschoolers' ability to make future-oriented decisions. The present studies investigated to what extent these choice tasks reflect children's ability to make choices in favour of their future self. In Experiment 1, preschoolers were presented with choices between a smaller immediate reward of one sticker and larger delayed rewards varying in amount from two to five stickers. Whereas 3-year-olds showed no increased tendency to choose the delayed option as quantity increased from two to five, 4-year-olds' future-oriented choices reflected the value of the delayed reward. In Experiment 2, preschoolers chose between immediate and delayed rewards that were equal in amount and varied between one and four stickers. Three-year-olds reliably chose the immediate reward and showed no differentiation among rewards, whereas 4-year-olds chose in a manner that suggested they were trying to satisfy both immediate and future desires. Together these results support the notion that future-oriented prudence reflects growth in concern for the future self.     

Anticipation of future interaction and the bystander effect

Previous research suggests that people are slower to offer help in an emergency when there are other witnesses than when there are not. This finding has come to be known as the bystander effect. In research that has demonstrated this effect, however, the other witnesses were invariably anonymous others who had no relationship with the subject and with whom the subject probably did not expect to interact again. The present research examined the hypothesis that the expectation of participating in subsequent face-to-face interaction with other bystanders would cause the bystander effect to be minimized. Female college students were led to believe either that they would have no personal contact with the other participants in an ostensible group discussion, or that the participants would be involved in a later face-to-face discussion session. Each subject then participated in what she believed to be an anonymous discussion via intercoms, involving either one person or five persons beside herself. During this period, an ostensible co-subject experienced a choking fit. Help was offered more quickly among subjects who expected future interaction than among those who did not. In the no future interaction condition, latencies to help were longer in six-member than in two-member groups, but the comparable difference, although in the same direction, was not reliable among subjects who expected interaction. Presence of male “co-subjects” in an exploratory condition failed to inhibit helping. Discussion centers on the broader implications of the findings.     

Imagining the future: degraded representations of future rewards and events in schizophrenia

Over the course of life, most people work toward temporally distant rewards such as university degrees or work-related promotions. In contrast, many people with schizophrenia show deficits in behavior oriented toward long-term rewards, although they function adequately when rewards are more immediately present. Moreover, when asked about possible future events, individuals with schizophrenia show foreshortened future time perspectives relative to healthy individuals. Here, we take the view that these deficits are related and can be explained by cognitive deficits. We compared the performance of participants with schizophrenia (n = 39) and healthy participants (n = 25) on tasks measuring reward discounting and future event representations. Consistent with previous research, we found that relative to healthy participants, those with schizophrenia discounted the value of future rewards more steeply. Furthermore, when asked about future events, their responses were biased toward events in the near future, relative to healthy participants' responses. Although discounting and future representations were unrelated in healthy participants, we found significant correlations across the tasks among participants with schizophrenia, as well as correlations with cognitive variables and symptoms. Further analysis showed that statistically controlling working memory eliminated group differences in task performance. Together these results suggest that the motivational deficits characteristic of schizophrenia relate to cognitive deficits affecting the ability to represent and/or evaluate distant outcomes, a finding with important implications for promoting recovery from schizophrenia.     

The effect of anticipated future interaction on reward allocation in same- and opposite-sex dyads

Hypotheses were tested concerning the relationship of anticipated future interaction and sex of allocator vs. sex of recipient on reward allocation norm choice. Male and female college students worked on a sex-neutral, attributionally ambiguous task. Subjects participated in same- and mixed-sex dyads, but were kept isolated from one another. All received feedback that they had contributed higher input than their partner and had been randomly chosen to apportion a group reward. The primary dependent variable was amount of reward allocated to self. As predicted, there was a significant difference in allocation norm choice in the no future interaction condition (with males favoring equity and females employing equality), while both sexes divided the reward equally between themselves and the coworker in the future interaction condition. A model was proposed to explain these findings in terms of a continuum of social interaction levels. Rather than being viewed as independent causal entities, sex of allocator and sex of recipient were demonstrated to play roles of differing importance as a function of the level of interaction experienced or anticipated.     

Causality orientations moderate the undermining effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation

The present study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in autonomy or control causality orientation would moderate the undermining effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation. Equal numbers of autonomy- and control-orientated participants provided solutions to an interesting puzzle under reward or no reward conditions. Participants were then required to provide further solutions to the puzzle in a free-choice period. The time spent in solving the puzzle during the free-choice period constituted the dependent measure of intrinsic motivation. Results revealed a significant interaction effect of causality orientations and reward condition on intrinsic motivation. Control-oriented participants assigned to the reward condition exhibited significantly lower levels of intrinsic motivation compared to those assigned to the no reward condition. In contrast, there was no significant difference in intrinsic motivation levels across the reward conditions for autonomy-oriented individuals. Findings indicate that an autonomy-oriented causality orientation offered a degree of ‘protection’ from the undermining effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation. This is in keeping with self-determination theory in terms of the interactive effects of environmental events and interpersonal factors on intrinsic motivation.     

High temporal discounters overvalue immediate rewards rather than undervalue future rewards: An event-related brain potential study

Impulsivity is characterized in part by heightened sensitivity to immediate relative to future rewards. Although previous research has suggested that “high discounters” in intertemporal choice tasks tend to prefer immediate over future rewards because they devalue the latter, it remains possible that they instead overvalue immediate rewards. To investigate this question, we recorded the reward positivity, a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) associated with reward processing, with participants engaged in a task in which they received both immediate and future rewards and nonrewards. The participants also completed a temporal discounting task without ERP recording. We found that immediate but not future rewards elicited the reward positivity. High discounters also produced larger reward positivities to immediate rewards than did low discounters, indicating that high discounters relatively overvalued immediate rewards. These findings suggest that high discounters may be more motivated than low discounters to work for monetary rewards, irrespective of the time of arrival of the incentives.     

Extending overjustification: the effect of perceived reward-giver intention on response to rewards

The perceived intention model incorporates a new moderator, beliefs about reward-giver intention, into the overjustification paradigm. In 2 simulated shopping studies featuring products paired with promotional rewards, consumers who believed the marketer was promotion focused (reward used to encourage purchase) reported lower purchase intentions and brand attitudes for promoted products after promotion, whereas consumers who believed the marketer was reward focused (promotion used to distribute the reward) showed no attitude change. Promotion-focus beliefs lowered attitudes by heightening the contingency between the promotion and purchase and thereby increasing the perceived causal role of the reward. This effect was contingent on initial behavior--postpromotion attitude change occurred for consumers who actively engaged in product decisions but not for consumers who passively observed the choice sets.     

编码后奖赏影响基于议程的学习：奖赏预期和结果的作用

基于ABR模型考察奖赏预期和奖赏结果对不同难度词对记忆与元记忆的影响。结果发现：(1)限时学习条件下,奖赏结果促进不同难度词对记忆成绩和学习判断,奖赏预期仅提高简单词对的记忆成绩。(2)自定步调学习条件下,定时学习判断时奖赏结果仅影响学习判断;奖赏预期促进高难度词对的学习时间分配,从而提高记忆成绩和学习判断。(3)在自定步调学习时,奖赏预期超越难度成为影响学习时间分配的因素。以上结果表明,个体会综合奖赏预期、奖赏结果和难度构建学习议程,足够大的奖赏预期会超越难度成为议程构建的主导因素。但奖赏预期和奖赏结果对记忆成绩、学习时间分配和学习判断的影响受学习条件调节。     

Mediating effect of environmental rewards on the relation between goal-directed behaviour and anhedonia

Depression can be explained by certain behavioural patterns, especially low levels of environmental rewards; it is generally accompanied by infrequent goal-directed behaviour, increased depressed mood, and anhedonia. However, no research has statistically examined the mediating effect of environmental rewards on the relation between goal-directed behaviour and the symptoms of depressed mood or anhedonia. This study sought to determine whether such a mediating effect of environmental rewards is present in cross-sectional study. The participants included 101 patients diagnosed with major depressive disorders. Data were collected through three questionnaires measuring depression and behavioural patterns that maintain depression: the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the Environmental Reward Observation Scale (EROS), and the Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale—Short Form (BADS-SF). Mediation analysis was conducted using depressed mood and anhedonia as dependent variables, environmental rewards as the mediating variable, and goal-directed behaviour as the independent variable. Environmental rewards significantly mediated the relationship between goal-directed behaviour and anhedonia but not that between goal-directed behaviour and depressed mood. No significant relationships were found among depressed mood, goal-directed behaviour and environmental rewards. From these results, we conclude that low levels of environmental rewards accompanied by infrequent goal-directed behaviour can lead to increased anhedonia but not depressed mood.

     

The effects of expected future interaction and prior group support on the conformity process

Previous results indicate that people conform more to group judgments when they have received unanimous group support for their opinions than when they have received no support. The present study tested the hypothesis that these differences would be attenuated when future interaction with the group members was anticipated. The 70 male subjects were tested in a Crutchfield-type conformity situation, where prior group support (100 vs 0%) and anticipation of future interaction (alone vs group) were manipulated. Predictions were based on an examination of conformity incentives that considered normative and informational sources of social influence, as well as Hollander's model of idiosyncracy credit. Consistent with predictions, conformity in the 0% prior support condition was greater when subjects anticipated future group interaction than when they did not, whereas the reverse was true in the 100% prior support condition. In addition, conformity was correlated negatively with both confidence in task ability and feelings of group acceptance when future interaction with the group was anticipated. These data suggest that when future group activity is expected, the tendency to reciprocate past treatment from the group is reduced.     

Foregoing the labor for the fruits: The effect of just world threat on the desire for immediate monetary rewards

Previous theorizing and research suggest that the need to believe in a just world develops when children begin to understand the benefits of foregoing their immediate gratifications for more desirable, long-term outcomes. Drawing on this previous work, we propose that an extant just world threat may induce a desire for smaller, immediate rewards at the expense of larger, delayed rewards. Participants were exposed to the suffering of an innocent or non-innocent victim and then, in a different context, completed a temporal discounting task that assessed, across six time delays, their preferences for smaller, immediate monetary rewards versus a constant, larger, delayed reward. Consistent with our reasoning, participants exposed to the suffering of an innocent versus non-innocent victim more steeply discounted the value of the delayed reward—that is, they were willing to accept smaller immediate rewards in place of the larger, delayed reward. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

人们如何设想未来：未来情景思维对个体心理和行为的影响

未来情景思维(Episodic Future Thinking, EFT)主要指人们基于当前情景或过去经历来思考、想象未来的过程, 是人们对于未来的一种设想。根据已有的行为实验和神经影像学等多个方面的研究结果, 系统论述了未来情景思维的概念和特征, 以及个体过去的生活经历及相应记忆和个体生活目标对其的影响, 通过概括和分析行为和脑神经两方面的证据来论述未来情景思维会对人们具体生活实践产生积极与消极的双向影响。当然, 未来还需要进一步加强未来情景思维研究的广度和深度, 特别是要细化未来情景思维的类型, 探讨未来情景思维可能导致的不适应行为以及影响个体心理和行为的作用机制, 从而为人们如何更积极地适应未来提供更充分的实证证据和理论构想。     

The surprisingly low motivational power of future rewards: Comparing conventional money-based measures of discounting with motivation-based measures

Temporal discount rates are often poor predictors of behaviors that we expect will be motivated by the future. The current research suggests this may be because conventional discounting measures are poor measures of the motivational value of future rewards. In six studies, I develop motivation-based measures of the present value (PV) of future rewards and compare the PVs obtained with those obtained using conventional money-based discounting measures. Conventional money-based PVs consistently overestimate motivation-based PVs and are discriminable from them. I explore explanations for this mismatch, including timing of effort exertion (Study 2) and loss aversion (Study 3), both features of the motivation-based measures. In Study 5, I use self-reports of valuation strategies and a time pressure manipulation to demonstrate that participants use different valuation strategies in the conventional money-based and the motivation-based measures that, in part, determine the difference in PVs obtained and the relatively low correspondence between them.     

The relative effect of cue interaction

It is well established that two predictor cues ( A and B ) of a common outcome interact in that the judgement of the relationship between each cue and the outcome is influenced by the pairing history of the other cue with that outcome. For example, when the contingency of A with an outcome is weaker than the contingency of B with that outcome, the rating of the predictiveness of A is reduced relative to a situation where only A is paired with the outcome. One explanation of such cue interaction effects is provided by the conditional ΔP account. Spellman (1996b) derived a counterintuitive prediction of the conditional ΔP account where cue interaction should not occur under certain conditions even though a relatively poor predictor of an outcome is paired with a relatively good predictor of that outcome. However, Spellman (1996b) did not provide data to evaluate this prediction. In the present paper, we report the relevant data and show that they are consistent with the conditional ΔP account. A competing account of cue interaction is provided by the Rescorla-Wagner (RW) model. We derive the predictions of the RW model for the conditions specified by Spellman (1996b), and show that at asymptote the predictions of the RW model are identical to those of the conditional ΔP account.