Skinner also experimented with a variable schedule.
Surprisingly, the rats were significantly more motivated when they were on the variable schedule.
However complex the system, the hope is always that the next drop will be the big one – it's this variable schedule that compels players.
With both automated casino games and video games like Borderlands, the key is intermittent rewards delivered on a variable schedule accompanied by monotonous but catchy audio and visual cues like bright colors and chiming noises.
Skinner found that even if he took away the rewards for the rats on the variable schedule, they would keep working, furiously pressing the lever for a very long time before giving up – much longer, in fact, than the rats on the fixed schedule would.
Variable schedules of reward are one of the most powerful tools that companies use to hook users.
At the heart of the desire engine is a powerful cognitive quirk described by B.F. Skinner in the 1950s, called a variable schedule of rewards.
Facebook and Twitter, to name just two of the most popular examples, provide well over a billion people with powerful social rewards on a variable schedule.
Both fixed and variable schedules of food availability resulted in the development of activity-based anorexia in rats.
We compared the effect of presenting the food at a fixed time of the light period with presenting it on a variable schedule.
