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RE: Why is Steemit Addicting?! Ludic Loops, Inconsistent Skill Based Rewards, and Other Neuropsychology
So why is a ludic loop pleasurable? Does completing one and reaching certainty increase dopamine levels, even if there's no reward for that particular loop?
Steemit really does make you want to write! It's amazing. I never focused on getting beyond grammar and mechanics and making my writing enjoyable until now. Writing essays in school was such a chore.
Best of luck finding your niche!
Thanks for the comment! Your writing is super enjoyable, so I'm thankful that steemit has motivated you!
Your question is really good and important.
I don't know of any research that has looked at dopamine level changes for non-rewarding loops. My sense is that the situation is more complex than just a dump of dopamine, though, which I'll go into in a second. To answer the first part of your question, ludic loops are sort of defined as pleasurable; that pleasure derives from achieving rewards sometimes, and the addictive quality is due to the sometimes-ness of the reward.
This observation goes way back to B.F. Skinner, who did some really famous experiments in behavioral psychology. He learned something rather surprising when experimenting with different reinforcement schedules to train pidgeons to do some task (like push a lever). He found that if the pidgeons were rewarded at some random occasions that they pressed the lever, instead of on all occasions, the pidgeons would actually press the levers more often. It became known as a 'variable ratio' reinforcement schedule.
The brain has many interacting nodes that are involved with goal-directed behavior. Parts of this network utilize dopamine as a neurotransmitter, which is why dopamine levels may increase when this part of the network is involved. There is some interesting research that points to the possibility the brain circuitry involved in computing causal efficacy of a stimulus to reward might be distinct from the circuitry involved in using that causal information to select a course of action (e.g. Tanaka et al., 2008, Calculating consequences: Brain systems that encode the causal effects of actions). That could create conflict in situations where some information in the brain saying 'Yes this action is causally related to a reward', and another brain area providing feedback saying, 'No, you're wrong. There is no reward.' The behavioral result is to retry when the reward doesn't come, and the frustration you might experience is probably related to that conflict.
Thank you. I appreciate the detailed response, and find this neuroscience stuff fascinating. What modern books on neuroscience and neuropsychology would you recommend, considering that I know a lot of math (M.S. level) but have shoddy knowledge of physics and chemistry?
So if this research is correct, a type of cognitive dissonance is hardwired into the brain? Wow.