Expectations and delayed gratification in bonobos

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Stevens ◽  
Alexandra G. Rosati ◽  
Sarah R. Heilbronner
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-189
Author(s):  
Shervin Assari ◽  

Background: A wide array of Socioeconomic Status (SES) indicators show differential effects for the members of diverse social groups. Researchers know a little about the ethnic variation and the effects of family income on delay discounting which is the predictor of risk behaviors. Objectives: This study examined the effect of family income and its differences on delayed gratification between Latino and non-Latino children. Materials & Methods: In this cross-sectional analytical study, data came from wave one of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study which included 3903 non-Latino or Latino Black or White American children who are between 9 and 10 years old. The predictor was family income. Data were collected from 21 sites in the US, in 2018. The outcome was the children’s delay discounting. We measured delay discounting, which reflected individuals’ tendency to assign less value to remote outcomes and rewards (inversely correlated with delayed gratification). Data analysis was done by linear regression in SPSS V. 22. Results: According to our pooled sample regression, higher family income was associated with lower children delay discounting (Beta=-0.05, P=0.021). We found a significant interaction between family income and ethnicity, suggesting that the association between family income and delay discounting is stronger for Latino compared with non-Latino children (Beta=-0.09, P=0.043). Conclusion: Not all ethnic disparities are due to socioeconomic status gaps. Across diverse social groups, differential returns of socioeconomic status indicators, such as family income, also contribute to ethnic disparities in health.


2021 ◽  
pp. 030573562110541
Author(s):  
Alma D Shimony ◽  
Veronika W Cohen

This study explores how mothers construct, implement, and break musical anticipations while singing to their infants. Five mothers were videotaped multiple times while singing to their infants the songs that they routinely sang in their homes. Analysis of the videotapes focused on the following two aspects of the mothers’ performance of the songs: (1) the vocal aspect of the mother’s performance, which was examined with respect to dynamic changes, accents, and rhythmic variations and (2) the physical aspect, which included moving, touching, and smiling while singing. The results of this study were reached by integrating the above data. We show that mothers do construct, implement, and break musical anticipations in vocal and motional performances of songs they sing to their infants. They construct their infants’ musical anticipations, encouraging them to predict what is about to happen; stimulate arousal and attention of the infants using the tension mechanism of delayed gratification; they emphasize unexpected musical events, creating emotional experiences for the infants. These conclusions provide a new explanation for the great importance of infant-directed mother singing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
Joe Ungemah

This chapter explores the strategies behind reinforcing and motivating behavior. The chapter begins with Petrovich Pavlov’s unwitting discovery of reinforcement triggers that lay at the foundation for how employers reward their workers. A study by B. F. Skinner on superstition demonstrates what happens when the links between behavior and reward are misaligned, while a consideration of the research on learned helplessness demonstrates how employees can become disenfranchised from their work after repeated failure or criticism. The chapter ends with delayed gratification and what preschool children taught us about restraint and future success. Despite an abundance of knowledge about reward, organizations utilize only the tip of the iceberg when motivating employees.


Author(s):  
Richard Holton

This chapter assesses the effects of childhood abuse and neglect. It begins by discussing the ‘overgeneral memory effect’. This is the finding that abused children tend to forget many of the specific happenings in their childhoods. Reflection on it can perhaps help to shed some light on how memory, and its suppression, works. The chapter then draws some parallels with the findings on delayed gratification. It is striking that in both cases one finds a need to shut down certain sorts of thought; the therapeutic interest is in how and when one might get it going again. The chapter also poses a question about how much the effects of childhood abuse are mediated by the expectations of the subjects. Many have claimed, with some plausibility, that one finds such mediation in various psychological illnesses: that the way that subjects understand their own condition affects the symptoms that they display.


Author(s):  
Molly Flessert ◽  
Michael J. Beran

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Serup Christensen ◽  
Lauri Rapeli

Abstract Previous scholarship has focused primarily on how citizens’ form policy preferences and how those preferences are taken into account in democratic decision-making. However, the temporal aspect of policy preferences has received little attention, although many significant societal problems have consequences that extend far into the future. To fill the gap, we examine to what extent citizens are willing to support policies, when rewards can only be expected after several electoral cycles. Using a conjoint survey experiment, we demonstrate that while a slight tendency towards more immediate policy rewards is discernible, citizens are not as impatient as has been widely assumed. In contrast with previous research, political trust does not affect the impact of the time horizon of policy choice. Instead, we find that people with higher education are more likely to choose policies the benefits of which materialize in the distant future. These findings add to the growing evidence which suggests that citizens’ short-sightedness is not a very strong driver of democratic myopia.


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