Comprendiendo nuestras adicciones

¿Cuántas veces compruebas tu email, tus estadísticas, tus blogs favoritos, incluso cuando es prácticamente imposible que haya novedad? ¿Te sorprende comportarte tan estúpidamente?
Para blogers adictos, la explicación conductista de nuestras compulsiones favoritas :

The key [de este comportamiento compulsivo] is what psychologists call 'operant conditioning'. This means the mechanisms by which behaviour is shaped by its consequences; how what we do depends on the rewards and punishments of what we did last time. (...). One suprising finding [ de los experimentos conductistas] is that if you want to train an animal to do something, consistently rewarding that behaviour isn't the best way. The most effective training regime is one where you give the animal a reward only sometimes, and then only at random intervals. Animals trained like this, with what's called a 'variable interval reinforcement schedule', work harder for their rewards, and take longer to give up once all rewards for the behaviour is removed. There's a logic to this. Although we might know that we've stopped rewarding the animal, it has got used to performing the behaviour and not getting the reward. Because 'next time' might always be the occasion that produces the reward, there's never definite evidence that rewards have stopped altogether.

No razones contra el cerebro. Es difícil ganar.
Continúa en Mind Hacks.