Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and group behavior in online communities and social networks.
Mi...
Updated 6 months ago
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Hello Anne,
Thank you for commenting and asking the question.
According to B. F. Skinner's Radical Behaviorism, the reason that we feel rewarded by point is because we have been conditioned and learned that points are something very cool to have. We have conditioned and learned to associate point with esteem. And this conditioning probably happen very early since we reward children who get good grades (a kind of point system) in school, look up to people who make lot of money (another kind of point system).
Typically these type of Skinnerian learning occur when we continually paired the accumulation of points with other existing reinforcers that we learned earlier in life. And Skinner believes that we can go all the way back to our basic needs at birth. No doubt his theory is very provocative. That is why it is call the "Radical" Behaviorishm, which claims that behavior is the result of the cumulative effects of all historical reinforcement from the subject’s environment, whether they are natural or artificial. Regardless, there seem to be quite a few studies suggesting the validity of his theory.
Anyway, the point is that points themselves don’t really satisfy our esteem needs in any intrinsic way. Just that for most people, we are conditioned and learned to associate the two of them very early in our lives.
Concerning the discussion of conscious or unconscious, that is a big topic. I have been computational neuroscientist for 7 years, and I've been through some of those long debates with colleagues and researchers. It really is more of a phylosopical question, because there are many aspects of consciousness that we cannot manipulate, experiment, or prove. However, there are some neurobiological mechanisms that has been linked to motivation. Maybe I can write about that later.
Alright, I hope I’ve address your question. Very interesting question indeed. I’m sure lot of people probably are wondering about the same thing. So thank you for asking. I hope to see you again on lithosphere.