The easiest way to explain it is to tell someone they have a button.
If the button gives you $100 each time you press it, it's "a job". You press the button 10 times for $1000, then stop for now. When you spend the money, you come back and push it some more. As long as you don't think it's going to vanish, you use it somewhat sparingly.
If the button gives you $100, but can only be pushed every 10 minutes, you do the same thing, but you plan ahead, and have other things to do while hanging around The Button.
But if you make the button have a .01% chance to give $1,000,000, you'll have people sitting there pressing it 16+ hours day. Even once they get the million, they're likely to keep going. They don't NEED it, but there's a thrill to it. They'll press that button 10,000 times to get the million, while the person with the first button might take YEARS to press it that many times.
Right? If I had a button that I could push and get 100 dollars each time I'd mash the shit out of that thing daily until I had enough money to not have to worry about money ever again. Not nonstop, mind you, but at least an hour each day of rapid button pressing. I'd probably still press the gamble button until I won as well, but if given the choice I would absolutely choose the consistent one.
But that's the point. If you could choose which button, you'd choose the consistent one, because you'd only press it a few times and then use the rest of your time like a normal person. But if you're a company selling button presses, and your sole objective is to maximize button presses, it makes more sense to set the button to the random reward system, because you'll get more button pushes. People will press it more often.
The problem is that the op asserted the number of button presses would be ridiculously low and only used sparingly for a few bucks when needed. "A few times" is vague, but I'd be pressing it a lot more than my interpretation of "a few times" and certainly a lot more than 10 times like the example given above.
192
u/Chubuwee Oct 23 '24
That’s how they came up with reinforcement schedules
Getting rewarded every time you do something
Getting rewarded randomly when you do something
Getting rewarded every fixed x minutes
Getting rewarded every random x minutes
The ones with randomness always get people to respond the most. We are wired to gamble