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I had a white rat named Elmo who didn't get fed until he learned to press
a bar in his cage. Whenever he pressed it, a pellet fell into his dish.
Elmo quickly learned to press the bar when he got hungry.
Then one day we (the professor and the rest of us budding psychologists)
changed the rules. Sometimes we gave Elmo dinner when he pressed the bar
- and sometimes we didn't. poor Elmo no longer knew when to expect his food.
So you know what he did? He pounded that bar relentlessly until the food
finally came. Sound familiar?
The biggest lesson we learned from Elmo was that if you want to make
behavior stick, don't reward it all the time - reward it now and then.
This strategy is called random reinforcement, and it's the same principle
at work on us when we play slot machines.
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