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How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

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

#101

Post by jojobas »

hmcq6 wrote: post #98
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is an unacceptable proposition Why?

Well first of all its circular logic. They're dumb because they're poor They're poor because they're dumb. Setting aside my moral issues with the idea of Economic Phrenology I think this is an acceptable checkpoint to stop at when trying to reason out an answer. Feel free to stop, look around stretch out your legs. And then get back on that train of thought and take it to the end. Why are they poor? There's the circu…

"Dumb" is just a projection. It takes a lot of checked boxes to become successful. Yes, one of them just may be a hereditary propensity to value reward more. It's not an incoherent belief any more than that some people could never play in NBA, it just takes another set of boxes, some of them hereditary.

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

#102

Post by jojobas »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #99
hmcq6 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well first of all its circular logic. They're dumb because they're poor They're poor because they're dumb. Setting aside my moral issues with the idea of Economic Phrenology I think this is an acceptable checkpoint to stop at when trying to reason out an answer. Feel free to stop, look around stretch out your legs. And then get back on that train of thought and take it to the end. Why are they poor? There's the circu…

I remember high school, coach organized a wrestling match played out over a week. You had 32 matches. The winners competed in 16 matches. The winners of that competed in 8 matches. Then 4 matches, then 2 matches then the final match. When you've built an economic system that distributes wealth that way you can't cast moral aspersions on the losers. Because that's what it does, creates losers by design.

There's repechage, and there's plenty of repechage in life. At the same time, yes life is not fair, and that's not really a property of the economic system anyone built.

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

#103

Post by unwise-exe »

hmcq6 wrote: post #95
unwise-exe wrote: post #94

> fMRI https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobe... > “If you’re in a highly resourced environment, with many rewards available, your brain gets tuned in a certain way. If you’re in an environment in which rewards are more scarce, then your brain accommodates the environment in which you live. Instead of being overresponsive to rewards, it seems like these brains, on average, are less responsive, b…

No... there's an example in the article. It means that kid A's brain wont reward them as much when they complete a task that leads to rewards. Which in theory would lead to less motivation to undertake those kinds of tasks in the first place. The example in the article uses money, the kids obviously know what money is or it wouldn't be a motivator. Basically, we're training poor kids to not even try because their bra…

I do not see how your mechanistic description actually conflicts with my description.

> their brains reward them less

The reward centers show lower activity. This does not have to be some inscrutable thing only noticeable with a fMRI. It could perfectly well be that they're not used to turning extra money into things they like, and so because of that don't show as much activity in the "I just got rewarded" area.

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

#104

Post by kirubakaran »

theshackleford wrote: post #97
AliveShine wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how were you informed that it was your fault?

The words "this is all you fault and we wish we never had you" and similar phrases and discussions, often including wishes they had followed through with abortions were used often and frequently. And this was not general, this was out and out "you are the reason we don't have money/can't do nice things/cant afford a mortgage" etc were levied at me again and again, over and over. For a significant chunk of my childhoo…

It probably means nothing coming from a stranger, but I want to say it anyway: I'm so sorry you went through that. Hugs!

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

#105

Post by hmcq6 »

roenxi wrote: post #100
hmcq6 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"* Do low SES children not understand that money is a reward?" As in they're stupid? How would they not understand it's a reward. "* Is there a capability gap at playing games? Or different responses to games themselves?" From the article - "Unbeknownst to the participants, the game was set up to control whether the guess would be correct or incorrect." So no... that's not a possibility

> As in they're stupid? How would they not understand it's a reward. A lot of people, if you give them a dollar they'll try to spend it on something. And that, counterintuitively, means they don't see the dollar as a reward. Someone who sees the dollar as a reward will put the dollar on their pile of dollars and then feel good because they have a dollar. The dollar, in itself, is the reward. If someone is dirt poor,…

"A lot of people, if you give them a dollar they'll try to spend it on something. And that, counterintuitively, means they don't see the dollar as a reward."

I think Homer already deconstructed your argument, no not that Homer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81DYZh6KaQ

But the question is, how can you attribute that behavior to the poor kids only if there is no mention of it in the study or article? Undoubtably some number of both the poor and rich kids are going to want to buy something with the money. Buried in your assumption is the assumption that poor kids are less likely to try to save money or that they don't see financial stability as rewarding.

And, in my opinion, the fact that the reward center of all the kids brains lit up fundamentally contradicts your central point. The poor kids did see the money as a reward for correctly guessing the answer in the game.

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

#106

Post by roenxi »

hmcq6 wrote: post #105
roenxi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As in they're stupid? How would they not understand it's a reward. A lot of people, if you give them a dollar they'll try to spend it on something. And that, counterintuitively, means they don't see the dollar as a reward. Someone who sees the dollar as a reward will put the dollar on their pile of dollars and then feel good because they have a dollar. The dollar, in itself, is the reward. If someone is dirt poor,…

"A lot of people, if you give them a dollar they'll try to spend it on something. And that, counterintuitively, means they don't see the dollar as a reward." I think Homer already deconstructed your argument, no not that Homer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81DYZh6KaQ But the question is, how can you attribute that behavior to the poor kids only if there is no mention of it in the study or article? Undoubtably som…

> But the question is, how can you ...

I can't. That was the hidden meaning behind the "interesting follow up questions" and "There isn't conclusive evidence in the article though." parts of my original comment.

And yes, that Homer clip is exactly the sort of flow I'm thinking about. The idea obviously isn't a new one. Compare it to a similar style of scene but with Mr Burns - he'd see the money and start comically salivating or something. Homer has a 10 second delay before even realising it is a good thing, just because he doesn't see money in itself as a goal.

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

#107

Post by hmcq6 »

unwise-exe wrote: post #103
hmcq6 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No... there's an example in the article. It means that kid A's brain wont reward them as much when they complete a task that leads to rewards. Which in theory would lead to less motivation to undertake those kinds of tasks in the first place. The example in the article uses money, the kids obviously know what money is or it wouldn't be a motivator. Basically, we're training poor kids to not even try because their bra…

I do not see how your mechanistic description actually conflicts with my description. > their brains reward them less The reward centers show lower activity . This does not have to be some inscrutable thing only noticeable with a fMRI. It could perfectly well be that they're not used to turning extra money into things they like, and so because of that don't show as much activity in the "I just got rewarded" area.

> So, "Kids aren't as excited about getting things they're not familiar with."?

These kids are poor they're not extraterrestrials.

I don't think it's fair to say poor kids aren't familiar with money. The study is on 12-14 year olds. The majority of kids buy lunch at school and even the ones on the free lunch program see their peers who splurge on 2 cookies or a soda from the vending machine or w/e.

My mom was a teacher, we were on welfare but that doesn't mean I wouldn't sometimes get birthday money. I collected coins from between the sofa cushions for junk food. I did odd jobs for spending money in the summer. I knew what money was and what it was for. Arguably more than well off kids.

> "oh nice I know something I can do with that!"

Why is that implied to be the rich kids response and not the poor kids? I worked in my dads convenience store when I was 12 and I saved up all summer so I could buy a ps2. Why is it assumed the poor kid isn't saving for anything?

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

#108

Post by citizenpaul »

semanticjudo wrote: post #53
citizenpaul wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inter…

> 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…

>this finding would stand regardless of race.

That is probably correct. I wasn't specifically dunking on this study about the race component. Its just a huge issue with this field in general. Also(My take) the race doesn't have so much to do with it as the typical culture from what we classify as race but since culture type is not ever tracked anywhere "race" is all we have to go on. There by my take could be someone that is "black/asian/indian/whatever" but raised in "white" culture and would count from a psychology experiment standpoint as white.

Sorry I don't have them, too much cruft online to find them. Mostly as debunks to other experiments where when real stakes are used the experiment could not be replicated. You may be able to find them searching "replication crisis" as one of your keywords but I don't have time to dig them up right now. its just a fringe minor interest of mine.

On a side note: Have you ever participated in any of these? I have and I've seen participants actively undermine the spirit of the experiment while in the experiment, making side bets and such. Usually there is some sort of cap on what you can get 5-20$ or something and people there are basically saying the few bucks was just for beer money or whatever so they are willing to risk it to make a "Pot" out of the money and one person can have a nice day from it. Again since most of the people available for these experiments (despite what TV portrays) are not really hard up for the few bucks from the couple hours they spend participating. (based on my real world experiences)

Could that have been part of the experiments? Maybe. Maybe for some of them, but not all the ones I've seen for sure. And they used that data to "prove" something...

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

dmurray wrote: post #52
elzbardico wrote: post #49

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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by elzbardico »

dmurray wrote: post #52
elzbardico wrote: post #49

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…

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.

intermittent is not the same thing as infrequent, rare, almost non-existing.
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