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How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

news.mit.edu

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Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#41

Post by semanticjudo »

citizenpaul wrote: post #39

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 la…

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.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#42

Post by anonymouskimmer »

PeterisP wrote: post #36
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 genera…

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, w…

I agree.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#43

Post by [deleted] »

citizenpaul wrote: post #39

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 la…

[deleted]

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#44

Post by nostromo »

Avicebron wrote: post #38
nostromo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#45

Post by anonymouskimmer »

mjburgess wrote: post #40
nostromo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 po…

> 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.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#47

Post by citizenpaul »

semanticjudo wrote: post #41
citizenpaul wrote: post #39

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 la…

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 developmen…

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"

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#49

Post by elzbardico »

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.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#50

Post by anonymouskimmer »

nostromo wrote: post #44
Avicebron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

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