Home / Concept of the Week / Variable ratio reinforcement
Concept of the Week · Episode 6
Rewarding a behaviour unpredictably, on average about one time in three, which produces the most persistent behaviour psychology has managed to make. It is how a fruit machine works, how you keep a fox coming to your garden, and how a social feed is designed.
Where it comes from
B.F. Skinner's work on schedules of reinforcement in the 1950s. Reward every time and the reward stops registering; stop rewarding and the behaviour dies out; reward at random and it keeps going almost indefinitely.
How Peter explained it on the show
Variable ratio reinforcement. Reward a behaviour every single time and the reward stops registering. Stop rewarding it and the behaviour dies out. Reward it unpredictably, on average about one time in three, and you get the most persistent behaviour psychology has managed to produce. It is how you keep a fox coming to your garden, how a fruit machine works, and, Peter argues, how a feed is designed. The uncomfortable part is that knowing all this confers no protection whatsoever.
Why it mattered that week
Twenty nine US states took Meta to court in Oakland over exactly this mechanism, and Peter opened episode six by explaining it before the news had even started. The same schedule turned up twice more in the episode: in why the Met Office lets the public name storms, and in why the two day weekend took a century to win. Peter is careful to say that his own screen time is not great, which is why the Triple T that week was set limits, and set them yourself rather than letting the app decide.
Hear it in context
Meta on trial, named storms and the weekend at 100
The psychology that keeps a fox in your garden is the psychology on trial in Oakland, with named storms and a hundred years of the weekend in between.
Questions people ask
Because the next pull might be the one. With a predictable reward you learn when to stop; with an unpredictable one there is never a clear signal that it is over, so the behaviour continues through long dry spells. That is why it resists extinction better than any other schedule.
The lawsuit argues that it is, and the psychologists giving evidence in Oakland describe the mechanism in Skinner's terms. Peter's view on the show is that whether or not it was designed with the textbook open, the effect is the same: a feed that pays out unpredictably will keep you scrolling.
Other concepts from the series
Mirror neurons · Authenticity · Confirmation bias · Attribution theory · INUS conditions · Role exit
About the series
Concept of the Week is a regular feature of Experience, the weekly podcast in which clinical psychologist Professor Peter Kinderman and communications expert Hilary Jeffs take the news apart to see what is driving it. Peter picks a psychological idea most of us have half-remembered wrong and explains what it actually shows. New episodes every Tuesday. Where to listen.