I've been wondering how something from the world of behavioral psychology would fit the world of economics. The spanking article brought it to the surface.
Positive reinforcement means that you give something "good" after a behavior that you wish to occur with greater frequency. Hence positive, you apply something, and reinforcement, you reinforce the behavior. If I get an animal, let's say a rat, to do something for reinforcement, e.g. food, I can start to increase the number of times the behavior needs to be performed before giving the food. So if my rat presses a lever once and I give it food, I can wait until it presses twice before giving it food once the reinforcement for pressing once is well established. Once press twice=food is established, I can increase it to thrice, and so on. So for a set quantity of food, I can get increasing amounts of lever presses from my rat! This is not unique. Suppose a kid screams once and the parents gives it candy. Then the parent decides not to cave so the kid screams a couple of times and the parent gives in and gives it candy. Now the screaming behavior is stronger. Next time the parent decides to not cave in, the kid will scream even longer. If the parent caves in after an even longer time, the screaming will be even more strongly reinforced, and so on. What I'm wondering is, does this seem interesting from an economic point of view? Is this something worth modeling, and how would it be modeled? Best regards, jsh __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
