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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

#81

Post by jojobas »

romaaeterna wrote: post #5

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 possibility that a heritable reward-focus in the parents leads to the SES results

This would imply that the problem with poor people lies within themselves rather than the society, which is an unacceptable proposition.

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

#82

Post by anonymouskimmer »

mjburgess wrote: post #60
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 develo…

> 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.

The experiment raising an infant chimpanzee alongside a human infant has been done. To presuppose that human intelligent is categorically distinct from chimpanzee intelligence such that this experiment does not lend evidence to a genetic basis of variations in human intelligence is further than I would go.

I presume that some amounts of variation in intelligence, as well as IQ scores, is due to factors that are neither directly genetic nor environmental, but are more random (such as cell division and post-fertilization DNA replication and rearrangements).

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #55
mjburgess wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

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.

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by beer_backwards »

my two cents (from personal experience): Getting money when you are from low SES is not that stimulating, because the money is inevitably spent on mundane purchases: i.e. buying a new pair of school shoes or school supplies, or beef instead of chicken for a meal that week, or fixing your car. If that money would be able to be spent on anything that the child desired, then I am sure that even a lower-SES would be more excited.

I fundamentally believe that the higher-SES you are, the more agency you have (especially financial), where lower-SES are in constant survival mode. It is hard to get excited by small sums of money when you know that it will just be immediately spent on boring things.

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

#85

Post by makeitdouble »

theshackleford wrote: post #67
almostnormal wrote: post #30

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 re…

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.

Paradoxally I think it can have the same kind of distanciation from money: it can be seen as easily disappearing and too much attachment/reliance on it hurts people.

Looking at the study I also wondered why they chose something as controversial as real money.

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

#86

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> Unfortunately the field of observational statistics called "psychometrics" which has "proved" this using "twin studies" is largely bunk

Do you have a credible source for this claim? The criticism I'm seeing is largely constrained [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study#Criticism

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

#87

Post by almostnormal »

theshackleford wrote: post #67
almostnormal wrote: post #30

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 re…

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.

Maybe acquiring a necessity is less rewarding than acquiring something pursued for fun? The point I was trying to make is that a dollar is not a neutral reward, and may cause a different response, that might otherwise be the same in all groups for something as neutral as "points".

That the response to rewards differs between poor and rich in general does't seem to be testable using a reward that both groups perceive differently.

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

#88

Post by makeitdouble »

gumby wrote: post #16

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…

The genetics/social aspect is probably less an issue than using real money as a reward.

I'm with on the process where we do experiments, and hope they can help to step forward in a direction or another. But then we're discussing an expirement that doesn't have any real exploitable results yet...which is weird, and probably on us.

I still hope this doesn't get ropped into a meta analysis that takes the results at face value as one data point to correlate to other similarly flawed studies.

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

#89

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> if it was determined tomorrow...that intelligence (and rewards for the sake of this thread) is totally inherited or even 80% inherited

IQ is 50 to 80% inherited [1]. (We can only predict about 10% of it with genetics [2].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104

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

#90

Post by JumpCrisscross »

almostnormal wrote: post #30

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 re…

> 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

Somewhat more destructively, poor parents sometimes tell their kids money isn't important. There is an entire lower-class moral stack that regards money as sinful, which is difficult to disentangle from learned helplessness.

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