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

一种常见的假设是，为了让个人在一项特定的任务中表现得更好，他们应该得到与他们表现如何成比例的奖励。这就是工作场所绩效薪酬背后的原因。然而，心理学家和经济学家早就认识到，奖励和绩效之间的这种关系只维持在一个点上：当奖励过大时，与较温和奖励的绩效水平相比，熟练任务的绩效往往会下降而不是增加。在国家科学基金会的资助下，约翰·奥多尔蒂博士和加州理工学院的同事们正在研究为什么当奖励变得特别大时，个人会非常关注失去或未能获得奖励的可能性。研究人员正在研究失败的可能性是否会对大脑中参与执行熟练动作的部分造成干扰。研究人员正在使用功能磁共振成像(FMRI)来测量大脑活动，同时志愿者执行一项熟练的任务，这项任务涉及一系列谨慎的手部动作，他们因此获得不同数额的潜在金钱奖励，从小到相对大不等。研究人员正在调查，与中等激励水平相比，较高奖励水平的表现水平是否会下降，以及大脑腹侧纹状体区域的活动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人在执行任务时对获得和/或失去结果的关注程度。研究人员断言，a)个人越专注于失败，他们的表现下降就越大；相反，个人越不倾向于失败的可能性，他们的表现就会提高得越多，b)注意力的差异与大脑活动的不同模式有关。理解为什么当回报(或赌注)很大时，业绩有时会下降，这在许多领域都有重要意义。所获得的知识可以用来设计更好的方案，通过将业绩恶化的可能性降至最低，来激励人们在工作任务中表现出色。更广泛地说，许多人类的努力要求在高风险(高潜在收益和高潜在损失)的条件下具有高水平的绩效。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，例如在手术或驾驶飞机期间。更好地了解性能下降是如何以及为什么发生的，将有助于制定新的战略，将其影响降至最低。O‘Doherty博士通过各种媒体参与研究成果的公开传播，包括报纸和杂志、科学博客和广播。本项目还有助于对本科生和研究生进行科学培训，研究成果将纳入本科生和研究生课程。

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.