When food is scarce and unpredictable, animals such as small passerines tend to increase their foraging, caching, and consumption of food, resulting in weight gain. In their interesting article, Anselme & Güntürkün (A&G) argue that this uncertainty-driven rise in motivation is the result of “incentive hope.” That uncertainty in the size, frequency, and delay with which food will be encountered enhances the value of the large and immediate rewards that the animal sometimes encounters and instills hope that these large rewards will once again be attained in the near future. The generation of such hope in the face of uncertainty thereby promotes and intensifies food seeking.
A&G argue that although this theory does not replace that of incentive salience, it provides a complement for it and helps explain many of the findings surrounding uncertainty for which incentive salience makes false predictions. Most notably, they argue that the incentive salience hypothesis would predict that increases in motivation seen around conditions of reward uncertainty (Anselme et al. Reference Anselme, Robinson and Berridge2013) are the result of some intrinsic attraction for uncertainty itself. However, they point to evidence that in a free-choice task, animals fail to prefer uncertain over certain reward conditions (McDevitt et al. Reference McDevitt, Dunn, Spetch and Ludvig2016) and can instead be made to choose suboptimally when the less advantageous choice contains conditioned stimuli (CSs) that provide predictive information regarding the outcome of that choice (Stagner & Zentall Reference Stagner and Zentall2010).
A&G argue that incentive hope is the product of evolutionary pressures for animals to survive in harsh and unpredictable environments, but that like many other evolutionary predispositions, it might be hijacked under changing environmental conditions and result in problematic behaviors including drug addiction, obesity, and disordered gambling. Notably, the overconsumption and hoarding of food seen in animals at risk of starvation could be seen as a precursor to compulsive eating and overconsumption if unpredictability remained (e.g., surrounding economic stability) but the availability and food type (more fat- or sugar-rich foods) changed. Whereas this is a plausible explanation for the growing obesity epidemic, it is somewhat unclear how this would translate to gambling. In the case of animals, unpredictable environments predict the overconsumption and hoarding of food, where food is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) reward. However, in gambling, one must assume that the UCS is money, especially given A&G's argument that uncertainty in itself is not rewarding. Players would therefore be largely inclined to seek and hoard monetary gain, which might explain behaviors seen in casual gamblers and with lottery ticket gambling, but appears to encounter certain problems when attempting to explain slot machine gambling. For example, incentive hope would suggest that problem gamblers would begin to hoard the monetary reward (e.g., earnings from gambling). However, instead, it appears more and more that as gambling problems develop, what players are hoarding is play itself (Dow Schüll Reference Schüll2012): specifically the ability to remain in the zone and carry on playing (Dixon et al. Reference Dixon, Graydon, Harrigan, Wojtowicz, Siu and Fugelsang2014), which requires spending rather than hoarding of money. Players report spending several hours gambling in front of the same slot machine, and gains are seen as the opportunity to further extend the duration of play rather than the chance to turn a profit. As a result, players might typically end a gambling stretch when they run out of money, rather than when they manage to hoard a large enough economic return. Therefore, in contrast to what might be predicted by incentive hope, the development of a gambling problem suggests a growing motivation to being in contact with and under the influence of uncertainty, rather than generating an urge to diminish and resolve it.
A&G highlight this need to resolve uncertainty by pointing to experiments using contrafreeloading, where animals choose and work harder under unpredictable conditions, because this is the way of countering the adverse effects of uncertainty. The motivation generated through incentive hope is born out of a “need to know” and extract exploitable information from an unpredictable environment. The authors go on to argue that the reason people gamble in casinos is because the venues are similar to autoshaping chambers under uncertain reward conditions, where players are enclosed in an environment in which outcomes are uncertain. Here, A&G seem to assume that, similar to animals in a research lab, humans are confined to the entrails of a casino and have no other choice than to attempt to resolve the uncertainty within as a means to survive or escape. This fails to explain an individual's initial and recurrent motivation to enter and remain within a casino for long stretches of time. If increased motivation is an attempt to counter the adverse effects of uncertainty, and individuals prefer certain over uncertain situations under free choice, it is hard to see how gambling would ever develop as a problem, because the heightened uncertainty of a casino would presumably be avoided when given the choice.
Nonetheless, maybe individuals, as A&G suggest, are not in fact attracted by uncertainty or even by the amount of reward that can be obtained. Instead they are attracted to and track the reliability of CSs – an ability that the authors argue is crucial for survival in the wild. This might explain the increased motivation to gamble generated by the advent of losses disguised as wins (LDWs) in slot machine gambling (Dixon et al. Reference Dixon, Harrigan, Sandhu, Collins and Fugelsang2010). LDWs occur when players are given the chance to make several small bets on more than one row in a multiline slot machine, creating the possibility for the slot machine to provide an individual with a win (and all its celebratory lights and sounds) that is less than the total amount wagered, making it in effect a loss. Increasing the number and frequency of wins, despite often decreasing their size, would increase the reliability with which certain cues predict a rewarded outcome. This would explain why players report that they prefer games that contain LDWs, and it suggests that in this case incentive hope possesses some predictive validity of its own.
When food is scarce and unpredictable, animals such as small passerines tend to increase their foraging, caching, and consumption of food, resulting in weight gain. In their interesting article, Anselme & Güntürkün (A&G) argue that this uncertainty-driven rise in motivation is the result of “incentive hope.” That uncertainty in the size, frequency, and delay with which food will be encountered enhances the value of the large and immediate rewards that the animal sometimes encounters and instills hope that these large rewards will once again be attained in the near future. The generation of such hope in the face of uncertainty thereby promotes and intensifies food seeking.
A&G argue that although this theory does not replace that of incentive salience, it provides a complement for it and helps explain many of the findings surrounding uncertainty for which incentive salience makes false predictions. Most notably, they argue that the incentive salience hypothesis would predict that increases in motivation seen around conditions of reward uncertainty (Anselme et al. Reference Anselme, Robinson and Berridge2013) are the result of some intrinsic attraction for uncertainty itself. However, they point to evidence that in a free-choice task, animals fail to prefer uncertain over certain reward conditions (McDevitt et al. Reference McDevitt, Dunn, Spetch and Ludvig2016) and can instead be made to choose suboptimally when the less advantageous choice contains conditioned stimuli (CSs) that provide predictive information regarding the outcome of that choice (Stagner & Zentall Reference Stagner and Zentall2010).
A&G argue that incentive hope is the product of evolutionary pressures for animals to survive in harsh and unpredictable environments, but that like many other evolutionary predispositions, it might be hijacked under changing environmental conditions and result in problematic behaviors including drug addiction, obesity, and disordered gambling. Notably, the overconsumption and hoarding of food seen in animals at risk of starvation could be seen as a precursor to compulsive eating and overconsumption if unpredictability remained (e.g., surrounding economic stability) but the availability and food type (more fat- or sugar-rich foods) changed. Whereas this is a plausible explanation for the growing obesity epidemic, it is somewhat unclear how this would translate to gambling. In the case of animals, unpredictable environments predict the overconsumption and hoarding of food, where food is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) reward. However, in gambling, one must assume that the UCS is money, especially given A&G's argument that uncertainty in itself is not rewarding. Players would therefore be largely inclined to seek and hoard monetary gain, which might explain behaviors seen in casual gamblers and with lottery ticket gambling, but appears to encounter certain problems when attempting to explain slot machine gambling. For example, incentive hope would suggest that problem gamblers would begin to hoard the monetary reward (e.g., earnings from gambling). However, instead, it appears more and more that as gambling problems develop, what players are hoarding is play itself (Dow Schüll Reference Schüll2012): specifically the ability to remain in the zone and carry on playing (Dixon et al. Reference Dixon, Graydon, Harrigan, Wojtowicz, Siu and Fugelsang2014), which requires spending rather than hoarding of money. Players report spending several hours gambling in front of the same slot machine, and gains are seen as the opportunity to further extend the duration of play rather than the chance to turn a profit. As a result, players might typically end a gambling stretch when they run out of money, rather than when they manage to hoard a large enough economic return. Therefore, in contrast to what might be predicted by incentive hope, the development of a gambling problem suggests a growing motivation to being in contact with and under the influence of uncertainty, rather than generating an urge to diminish and resolve it.
A&G highlight this need to resolve uncertainty by pointing to experiments using contrafreeloading, where animals choose and work harder under unpredictable conditions, because this is the way of countering the adverse effects of uncertainty. The motivation generated through incentive hope is born out of a “need to know” and extract exploitable information from an unpredictable environment. The authors go on to argue that the reason people gamble in casinos is because the venues are similar to autoshaping chambers under uncertain reward conditions, where players are enclosed in an environment in which outcomes are uncertain. Here, A&G seem to assume that, similar to animals in a research lab, humans are confined to the entrails of a casino and have no other choice than to attempt to resolve the uncertainty within as a means to survive or escape. This fails to explain an individual's initial and recurrent motivation to enter and remain within a casino for long stretches of time. If increased motivation is an attempt to counter the adverse effects of uncertainty, and individuals prefer certain over uncertain situations under free choice, it is hard to see how gambling would ever develop as a problem, because the heightened uncertainty of a casino would presumably be avoided when given the choice.
Nonetheless, maybe individuals, as A&G suggest, are not in fact attracted by uncertainty or even by the amount of reward that can be obtained. Instead they are attracted to and track the reliability of CSs – an ability that the authors argue is crucial for survival in the wild. This might explain the increased motivation to gamble generated by the advent of losses disguised as wins (LDWs) in slot machine gambling (Dixon et al. Reference Dixon, Harrigan, Sandhu, Collins and Fugelsang2010). LDWs occur when players are given the chance to make several small bets on more than one row in a multiline slot machine, creating the possibility for the slot machine to provide an individual with a win (and all its celebratory lights and sounds) that is less than the total amount wagered, making it in effect a loss. Increasing the number and frequency of wins, despite often decreasing their size, would increase the reliability with which certain cues predict a rewarded outcome. This would explain why players report that they prefer games that contain LDWs, and it suggests that in this case incentive hope possesses some predictive validity of its own.