Philadelphia, February 3, 2010 - People have typically viewed the benefits that accrue with social status primarily from the perspective of external rewards. A new paper in the February 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier suggests that there are internal rewards as well.
Dr. Martinez and colleagues found that increased social status and increased social support correlated with the density of dopamine D2/D3 receptors in the striatum, a region of the brain that plays a central role in reward and motivation, where dopamine plays a critical role in both of these behavioral processes.
The researchers looked at social status and social support in normal healthy volunteers who were scanned using positron emission tomography (PET), a technology that allowed them to image dopamine type 2 receptors in the brain.
This data suggests that people who achieve greater social status are more likely to be able to experience life as rewarding and stimulating because they have more targets for dopamine to act upon within the striatum.
What's the direction of cause and effect here? Might the higher dopamine receptor concentration motivate people do to more to raise their status? Or does the brain grow more dopamine receptors once higher status has been achieved?
By Randall Parker at 2010 February 25 11:17 PM Brain EconomicsIt's highly unlikely that non-pathological parents would act to reduce their kids' status, and thus reduce their fitness.
What bob badour's comment suggests to me, is that parents who use reinforcement set their kids up to become narcissists, and those that use punishment set their kids up to suffer from depression. Addicted to either adulation or criticism. Meddle with your kids too much either way, either as a parent or a school teacher or therapist, and you get kids that are codependent on drugs and emotional/psychologic (giving or taking) abuse. Politics, journalism, and college professors are a good place to have a steady stream of new but non-lasting hero worshippers. But if your dad's an alcoholic then you'll be one too. But they also say the brain is like a muscle, and you are what you eat. Outside of near-death experiences, i haven't seen too many people have a spontaneous change of their core personality. But that turns into something philosophical, like the existence of free will and if you actually have the ability to influence the direction of your life. One person thinks they are perfect, and the other thinks they are broken. So its easily blamed on nature and not nurture. Is modern science even capable of suspending judgement on something as non-scientific as that? And what is the benchmark of a "normal healthy" individual anyway? Sounds like a quiz in a teen-marketed advice and fashion magazine.
Many would argue that predominant use of punishment is pathological. The Lakota found the Europeans they encountered savages because they beat their own children. ::shrug::
Being choosy about whom you marry is seventy percent of all you can do to try to make sure your kids turn out well.
To thread the needle between punishment and encourage, I think spending time with children, a lot more time than most modern parents average, is the most important. I think if you're only communicating with kids 10-30 minutes a day MAX!, then condensed down in that time is a % being used for punishment and encouraging. When a couple of hours are spent (meaning parents aren't watching TV, neither are kids, computer time limited), there's a lot more time to just learn... moments of "rebuke" and/or encouragement are certainly a part of this, but it doesn't have to be a hallmark moment every second as many modern parents try to do when overemphasizing punishment/encouragement and cramming down their parenting into 10 minute blocks per day.