Aversion to losing? Neural mechanisms underlying the paradoxical effect of incentives on performance

一个普遍的假设是，为了让个人在某项任务中表现得更好，应该根据他们的表现给予相应的奖励。这就是工作场所基于绩效的薪酬背后的原因。然而，心理学家和经济学家早就认识到，奖励和表现之间的这种关系只在一定程度上成立：当奖励太大时，与较适度的奖励相比，技能任务的表现水平往往会下降而不是提高。在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的资助下，加州理工学院（California Institute of Technology）的约翰·奥多尔蒂（John O’doherty）博士和他的同事正在研究，为什么当奖励变得特别大时，人们会非常关注失去或无法获得奖励的可能性。研究人员正在研究失败的可能性是否会干扰大脑中参与熟练动作的部分。研究人员使用功能性脑磁成像（fMRI）来测量志愿者在完成一项技术任务时的大脑活动，这项任务涉及一系列细致的手部动作，他们会因此获得不同数量的潜在金钱奖励，从小到大。研究人员正在调查，与中等激励水平相比，大奖励是否会降低表现水平，以及大脑“腹侧纹状体”区域活动的减少是否与个人表现下降有关。在这个项目中，研究人员使用多种方法来操纵个体在执行任务时专注于获得消极和/或失去结果的程度。研究人员断言：a)个人越关注失败，他们的表现下降得越大；然而，相反地，个体越不倾向于失败的可能性，他们的表现就越好，b)注意力的差异与大脑中不同的活动模式有关。理解为什么当奖励（或赌注）很大时，绩效有时会下降，在许多领域都有重要的意义。所获得的知识可以用来设计更好的方案，通过最大限度地减少表现恶化的可能性，来激励人们在工作任务中表现出色。更一般地说，人类的许多努力都需要在高风险（高潜在收益和高潜在损失）的条件下取得高水平的绩效。竞技体育是一个明显的例子，但类似的情况也可能出现在其他高压环境中，比如手术或驾驶飞机。更好地理解性能下降是如何以及为什么发生的，可以帮助制定新的策略，以尽量减少其影响。O'Doherty博士通过各种媒体参与研究成果的公开传播，包括新闻报纸和杂志、科学博客和广播。本项目还有助于本科生和研究生的科学训练，研究结果将纳入本科生和研究生的课程。

A common assumption is that in order to get individuals to perform better on a particular task, they should be rewarded in proportion to how well they perform. This reasoning is behind performance-based pay in the workplace. However, psychologists and economists have long recognized that this type of relationship between rewards and performance only holds up to a point: When rewards get too large, often performance for a skilled task decreases rather than increases, compared to performance levels for a more moderate reward. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. John O'Doherty and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology are investigating why when a reward becomes especially large, individuals become very focused on the possibility of losing or failing to attain that reward. The researchers are studying whether the possibility of failure causes interference in the parts of the brain involved in performing a skilled act. The investigators are using functional magnetic brain imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity while volunteers perform a skilled task that involves a sequence of careful hand movements for which they receive differing amounts of potential monetary rewards, ranging from small to relatively large. The researchers are investigating whether performance levels for the larger rewards decreases relative to that for medium incentive levels, and whether decreasing brain activity in an area called the "ventral striatum" is related to individual performance decrements. In this project, the investigators are using multiple methods to manipulate how much individuals are focused on obtaining a negative and/or losing outcome while they perform the task. The researchers assert that a) the more individuals are focused on losing, the greater their performance declines; whereas, conversely, the less individuals are oriented to the possibility of losing, the greater their performance increase and that b) differences in focus are related to differing patterns of activity in the brain. Understanding why it is that performance sometimes decreases when the rewards (or stakes) are large has important implications in a number of areas. The knowledge gained could be used to design better schemes for incentivizing people to perform well on a work task, by minimizing the potential for performance deteriorations. More generally, many human endeavors demand high levels of performance under conditions of high stakes (high potential gain and high potential losses). Competitive sports are an obvious example, but similar scenarios likely arise in other high-pressure contexts, such as during surgery or the piloting of aircraft. A better understanding of how and why performance decrements occur could aid the development of new strategies to minimize their impact. Dr. O'Doherty participates in the public dissemination of research findings through a variety of media, including news papers and magazines, science blogs, and radio. The present project also contributes to the scientific training of undergraduate and graduate students, and the results of the research will be incorporated into courses taught at the undergraduate and graduate level.