Old-school parenting strategies like ‘go to your room!’ can often amplify the very behavior that parents want to correct.
Articles on Rewards
Displaying 1 - 20 of 26 articles
Your brain processes the pleasure of everyday behaviors like eating and drinking similarly to the pleasure of using drugs. Disentangling them requires understanding how memories are formed.
It is ‘awards season’ for schools, when students, teachers and families gather for speech days. Research shows giving awards to kids children can be more harmful than helpful.
Parents offer rewards because they think it will help a child reach a desired goal. But it is more helpful to focus on effort than ‘success’.
Long-term goals can be hard to stick to if the benefits are only way off in the future. Research suggests ways to focus on the here and now to help you ultimately achieve your more far-off targets.
Whistleblowers should be entitled to financial support. But that has potential costs as well as benefits.
From dopamine hacking to dopamine detoxes, some people have sought to harness this brain chemical to improve their mood and productivity. But it’s far more complicated than that.
Traditional report cards sent home every few months are fine for most students. But for kids with behavioral issues, a daily report card can be a better option.
Sports wagering apps bring in-play betting right to the palm of your hand. Easy, ever-present access can lead to excitement and fun – or problem gambling.
Art classes and STEM toys are nice, but there are simple and free ways parents can encourage their child’s creativity – or keep it from getting squashed.
For a learner to be the best and to win awards, their peers must lose. This expense is far too great to ignore in a country fraught with inequalities.
Mouse brains produce random, strong bursts of dopamine and are able to control them. This may challenge many long-held ideas about learning and motivation.
New research demonstrates that it is more difficult to learn something new if the information had been rewarded in the past. In fact, the higher the reward, the worse the future learning.
Receiving a pay raise will make you feel happier only if it was bigger than what you had expected. Why? Because it helps you learn.
Forget being super self-critical and whipping yourself into shape. There are ways to set yourself up for success that are far kinder and work better.
What kind of curious are you? Scientists explore different types of curiosity and their home in the brain.
Whether the sins of our past stay with us forever has become a pertinent question of our time. A philosopher argues we don’t need to carry our past burdens – although there are some moral conditions.
When you engage in recreational gambling, you’re not simply playing against the odds – you’re battling an enemy trained in the art of deceit and subterfuge who uses human nature against you.
Our neural circuits lead us to find comfort in those like us and unease with those who differ, resulting in a battle between reward and distrust. But these brain connections aren’t the end of the story.
People tend to value potential future rewards less than similar immediate rewards when they must choose between them. Psychologists and economists call this “delay discounting”.
Top contributors
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Instructor of Philosophy, Arizona State University
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Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham, (currently Vice-Chancellor at MILA University, Malaysia), University of Nottingham
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Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology, Dean of Faculty Affairs, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College
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Associate professor, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Lecturer, Psychology, University of Tasmania
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Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland
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Senior Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology
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Cognitive Scientist & Senior Policy Advisor, Harvard University
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Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
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Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Tasmania
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Assistant Professor of Psychology, Concordia University
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Research associate in Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL
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Postdoctoral Fellow, University of the Western Cape
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PhD researcher, Cardiff University
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Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Georgetown University