You could in principle very easily ignore the dice and eat the chocolate regardless. You need to take it upon yourself to follow through with the scheme and forfeit the chocolate 3 times out of 4. If you start with the understanding that chocolate is a possibility 4 times out of 4 if you followed a more permissive scheme, then you are effectively punishing yourself 3⁄4 of the time, which I expect would work as negative reinforcement for said task or the reward scheme in general. And it would also require enough willpower, which some people won’t have.
There were studies on than with kittens or pupps and it seems that in fact this works like this:
“When I do this trick, I get a reward! Let’s do the trick! I didn’t get the reward? Maybe I should try again! I got the reward, the world works like it should, yay! Let’s get another one! No reward? Maybe they didn’t notice? I have to try harder! Still no reward? Let’s try again, I’m sure I’ll get it this time”.
The puppies noticed the reward, not the punishment. If it was as regular as one out of four, they would notice this regularity and act according to the expectation of the result—not try when a punishment was due and try when a reward was due.
If you start with the understanding that chocolate is a possibility (...) then you are effectively punishing yourself 3⁄4 of the time.
This seems counter-intuitive to me. I do like chocolate, a lot, so I do not eat chocolate every chance I get—that wouldn’t end well. I have to pick some way to choose when I get chocolate, and my usual method (and any proposed method that may involve dice, really) denies me chocolate more than just 75% of the times that I would like chocolate. So why not use an arbitrary but useful method of choosing when I get chocolate? I’m not going to be very disappointed when I roll “not chocolate”, because I am usually in the “not chocolate” state by default...
On the other hand, I do understand why this system might not be good; increasing chocolate intake is not ideal, or I would be doing it anyway. So this reward system should be short term, not long term. But I think it would be motivating (for me).
I am not a psychologist, but it seems at least plausible that getting a chocolate one time in four because you saw yourself roll a die and chose whether to eat a chocolate depending on the result might have different motivational effects than getting a chocolate one time in four according to some mechanism competely opaque to you.
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/schedules.htm
You cannot impose a reward schedule on yourself...
I complete a task, I roll a d4 once, and in case of success I eat a chocolate. What exactly is the problem with this?
You could in principle very easily ignore the dice and eat the chocolate regardless. You need to take it upon yourself to follow through with the scheme and forfeit the chocolate 3 times out of 4. If you start with the understanding that chocolate is a possibility 4 times out of 4 if you followed a more permissive scheme, then you are effectively punishing yourself 3⁄4 of the time, which I expect would work as negative reinforcement for said task or the reward scheme in general. And it would also require enough willpower, which some people won’t have.
This makes sense and feels correct to me.
There were studies on than with kittens or pupps and it seems that in fact this works like this:
“When I do this trick, I get a reward! Let’s do the trick! I didn’t get the reward? Maybe I should try again! I got the reward, the world works like it should, yay! Let’s get another one! No reward? Maybe they didn’t notice? I have to try harder! Still no reward? Let’s try again, I’m sure I’ll get it this time”.
The puppies noticed the reward, not the punishment. If it was as regular as one out of four, they would notice this regularity and act according to the expectation of the result—not try when a punishment was due and try when a reward was due.
This seems counter-intuitive to me. I do like chocolate, a lot, so I do not eat chocolate every chance I get—that wouldn’t end well. I have to pick some way to choose when I get chocolate, and my usual method (and any proposed method that may involve dice, really) denies me chocolate more than just 75% of the times that I would like chocolate. So why not use an arbitrary but useful method of choosing when I get chocolate? I’m not going to be very disappointed when I roll “not chocolate”, because I am usually in the “not chocolate” state by default...
On the other hand, I do understand why this system might not be good; increasing chocolate intake is not ideal, or I would be doing it anyway. So this reward system should be short term, not long term. But I think it would be motivating (for me).
I have observed that when gamblers know the odds, they don’t gamble less. But my sample size is low.
I am not a psychologist, but it seems at least plausible that getting a chocolate one time in four because you saw yourself roll a die and chose whether to eat a chocolate depending on the result might have different motivational effects than getting a chocolate one time in four according to some mechanism competely opaque to you.
d4 are bitches to roll! A d8 is much more fulfilling...