Where scholarship meets technological innovation . . .
Commentary
Valerie Hardcastle
Northern Kentucky University, KY, USA
Hardcastle, Valerie. 2022. “Challenges vs. Frustrations and Non-Rewards vs. Punishments.”
Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 3, no. 2: 19-26. https://doi.org/10.33497/2022.winter.3.
Abstract: In his new book Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead Us to the Good Life (2020), Elpidorou oversimplifies the behavioral data on unexpected outcomes, and, as a result, has a more expansive view of “frustration” than should be allowed. I argue that in order to understand the basis of human motivation, we need to distinguish between non-rewards and punishments. Humans are highly motivated by what they perceive as an unexpected non-reward, but they are not by what they experience as an aversive punishment. And it is aversive punishments that we find frustrating; in contrast, we find unexpected non-rewards invigorating.
Keywords: allocentric learning, egocentric learning, frustration, intermittent rewards, motivation, punishment, non-rewards
Andreas Elpidorou’s new book Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead Us to the Good Life (2020) abounds with thought-provoking vignettes and curious research findings. He’s a good storyteller, and his book is a fun read. And there is much that I believe he got exactly right or was close enough to right that to disagree would only be splitting hairs. But there is one major claim Elpidorou makes that I just flat disagree with. I believe that a bit of the book is conceptually muddled and should be sorted out. I try to do some of that sorting here.
I am referring to Elpidorou’s claims regarding frustration. He asserts that while “frustration is aversive and oppressive,” it is also “extremely energizing.” Importantly for his argument, frustration “can invigorate our responses to perceived difficulties” (2020, 73). While I appreciate how frustration can be aversive, I have not been able to find my way to accepting that it motivates goal-seeking. My diagnosis for the problem is that Elpidorou is oversimplifying what the scientific data on unexpected outcomes indicate, and, as a result,
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misinterprets his stories and has a more expansive view of what “frustration” means than what the common folk (or a technical philosopher) would allow. I shall explain.
INTERMITTENT REWARD SCHEDULES AND UNEXPECTED NON-REWARDS
Elpidorou opens his discussion of understanding the motivational qualities of frustration by describing how rats behave under an intermittent rewards schedule (also known as a variable ratio schedule) (Miltenberger 2008). What is key for these experiments is that the rats have developed an expectation of a reward for some behavior. When they produce a previously rewarded behavior and then do not receive the expected reward, their response is to repeat the rewarded behavior even more energetically to get the reward they were denied. Elpidorou notes that the rats’ behavior has been called the “frustration effect” and suggests that it is an “emotional” reaction to an expectation denied.
But, of course, naming something as a “frustration effect” does not mean that the rats were actually frustrated. Intermittent reward schedules are a well-known and well-studied part of the operant conditioning literature and they impact all sorts of human endeavors. It is well documented that if you want to train a creature to behave in a certain way, then you should provide them with irregular rewards for the desired behavior. Creatures learn more quickly and exhibit the behavior more robustly when they do not receive a reward each time they do what they have been trained to do. People who train dogs know this. Parents who raise children learn this quickly. And gambling casinos make millions off of slot machines using this principle.
This principle also explains why video games like QWOP, which require an esoteric physical skill that one has to practice for hours on end to acquire, are so popular. In QWOP you use the keys of a keyboard to move body parts on a virtual person to help that person run. Because most of us do not normally pay explicit attention to how we need to move our body parts in order to run, we have a very difficult time translating our implicit knowledge into keystrokes. Indeed, those who lose proprioception in real life find that they have to relearn how to move through space by now consciously and deliberately moving each limb. Walking is a huge challenge and can require significant attention even after years of practice (Cole 2016). In QWOP, the reward for the gamers’ playing is making the toy human move as they intended. Each time they achieve this goal, they get a small psychological boost. By their effort, they achieved what they were trying to do. But they are not successful every time they try. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, they get the non-reward of the virtual person falling down. The behavioral response is to double-down and try again. Small rewards coupled with unexpected non-rewards leads to persistence (Papini 2003, 2006).
And this double-down response explains a lot of human behavior—why people spend hours doing everything from trying to perfect the 3-point jump shot to timing themselves completing the Sunday crossword puzzle. Elpidorou notes that the author of QWOP explains the fascination with his game by claiming that “frustration can (counterintuitively) be quite pleasurable” (78). But an unexpected non-reward is not the same thing as a frustrating emotional experience, despite labeling it as such. Certainly, claiming that frustration is pleasurable is at odds with Elpidorou’s claim that frustration is aversive.
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How do we reconcile these opposing interpretations of frustration? The short answer is that we need to distinguish between an unexpected non-reward and an unexpected punishment. Only the latter is truly frustrating in an emotional sense. Or at least: these unexpected consequences are two different types of events that have different impacts on creatures, so we should probably call them by different names. I am claiming that unexpected punishment is more akin to the lay interpretation of frustration than an unexpected non-reward.
FRUSTRATION AND UNEXPECTED PUNISHMENTS
Let us compare the psychological reactions and behaviors one finds with intermittent reward schedules with what we find in (what I suggest are) cases of unexpected punishment. Intermittent reward schedules produce more of the rewarded behaviors than schedules that reward each time the behavior is enacted. According to Amsel’s frustration account (1992), an unexpected non-reward is a complex aversive experience. Initially, primary frustration occurs when no reward is received. This leads to secondary frustration, which is the expectation of future non-rewards. This secondary frustration then gets paired with the actual future reward received with an intermittent reward schedule, which ultimately leads to behavioral persistence.
However, recent studies using more ecologically relevant tasks across a wide range of mammals—instead of relying only on rats running mazes—suggest an alternative interpretation of what increases motivation that does not rely on any accompanying aversive states (Reimner, Thompson, and Burman 2018). In particular, and consistent with Amsel’s view, the “functional-search” hypothesis holds that behavior moves from consumption to exploration when animals receive a lower-than-expected value reward (e.g., Flaherty 1996; Papini 2003, 2006). However, the frustration hypothesis also predicts that creatures would avoid the locations in which they experience aversive frustration, but the more naturalistic studies did not find this to be the case. Instead, results dovetail with ecological models of patch exploitation, which hold that foraging switches from a patch to sampling the environment when yield is less than expected (Bernstein, Kacelnik, and Krebs 1988). The implication of these studies is that unexpected non-rewards could provoke a non-affective functional response of increased motivation to explore available alternatives instead of any particular emotional response at all. In any event, it appears premature to conclude that an unexpected non-reward feels aversive in any deep sense.
Behavioral psychologists distinguish between allocentric and egocentric learning. The former refers to tracking changes in the environment; the latter to tracking emotional responses to environmental change. One can have the former without the latter. I am suggesting that this is exactly what happens in cases of unexpected non-reward. An unexpected non-reward provokes tracking environmental changes, but it need not lead to any affective reaction to these changes.
In contrast, unexpected punishments lead to quite different outcomes. The examples that Elpidorou cites regarding cases of aggression following an unexpected “loss” (Elpidorou 2020, 79) are examples of unexpected punishments. These are different than simply not getting an expected reward, for, in these cases, there are emotional responses to environmental changes being tracked as well. (Elpidorou quite rightly questions the direct causal link that some wish to make between frustration and violence, but the correlation data stand nonetheless.) That is, having a football game called on account of rain is different from losing to an opponent you expected to beat. The former is much less likely to result in acts of aggression or violence than the latter. The
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reason is that spectators not getting to view the game now, but perhaps being able to see it later, while disappointing, is not an aversive experience to track, but rather an environmental correlation to notice. In contrast, the latter truly is a loss. Spectators who watch their favored team lose do experience something aversive, and they can lash out because of it. Being on the receiving end of an unexpected punishment evokes an emotional reaction in spectators.
We can also see this distinction in Elpidorou’s own discussion of chronic pain. In some cases, patients experience chronic pain as an unexpected punishment; in others, patients experience chronic pain as an unexpected non-reward. The patients who exclaimed, “My back pain is ruining my life. . . . It has robbed me of my right to a better, more enriched lifestyle” (2020, 88), and “I resent my body for failing me, especially when I work so hard to be good to it,” (89) are experiencing their pain as a punishment. But those who explain, “I refuse to let back pain interfere with my life” (89), or “It hurts, it sucks, but you know, such is life” (89), are experiencing their pain as a non-reward.[1] The patients who experience chronic pain as a punishment often, as indicated in the text, feel “consumed by the pain” (88), which could be another way of saying that they engaged in tracking their emotional responses to pain. And doing so zaps their motivation and interferes with life’s pleasures. While I cannot say that patients who experience their chronic pain as a non-reward see it as something pleasurable, I do claim that they find it as a challenge that requires “effort and dedication,” an expression of increased motivation perhaps and a willingness to explore new options.
Importantly, we can see that the same event is not read by all individuals in the same way, even under what appear to be similar circumstances. One person’s punishment might be another’s non-reward. I would argue that Elpidorou’s reaction of “despair” and “scornful self-blame” (2020, 81) to software crashing and losing a document before it was saved is one of an unexpected punishment. Elpidorou experiences loss with the crash. On the other hand, some react by shrugging, rolling their eyes, rewriting the document, and developing new protocols against information loss. In these instances, the crash was just perceived as an unexpected outcome in which they did not get what they anticipated, but not as maltreatment by the computer gods.
In cases in which we have an unexpected outcome that is “thoroughly unpleasant,” in which we are “made vividly and painfully aware that what you desire can’t be obtained” (Elipidorou 2020, 73), we are egocentrically experiencing frustration at what is perceived to be an unexpected punishment. We are tracking our emotional response to an environmental event. But in cases in which the unexpected outcome can “provide us with the psychological resources needed to keep pursuing our goals” (73), we are experiencing an unexpected non-reward. We are allocentrically noticing changes in our environment and using this information to explore different responses.
VALUED PURSUITS AND A LIFE WORTH LIVING
Having this distinction in hand also explains Elpidorou’s odd and rather contradictory account of Andrew Wiles pursuing Fermat’s Last Theorem. While it is true that Wiles stumbled on this problem as a child and thought he wanted to solve it, it is not quite true that he “devoted his life to Fermat’s Last Theorem” (Eipidorou 2020, 97). At the same time, he did work on the solution for several years as an adult—in solitude for six years
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and then publicly for the next two—and he and his graduate student published what is now regarded as the definitive solution in 1995 (Singh 1997).
On the one hand, Elpidorou claims that, “Fermat’s last theorem frustrated Wiles. And it's that frustration that made the theorem a central part of Wiles’s life” (2020, 98). But on the other hand, Wiles muses, “You might ask how could I devote an unlimited amount of time to a problem that might simply not be soluble. . . . The answer is that I just loved working on this problem” (as quoted on 98). And “this was my childhood passion. . . . There’s no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way Fermat did” (as quoted on 99). Just loving working on something or having a lifelong passion does not sound like something I (at least) would describe as frustrating. A challenge, yes, and something that requires considerable attention and effort, yes, but not something that is fundamentally unpleasant. Wiles’s comment that, “I was obsessed. I enjoyed pitting my wits against it” (as quoted on 98), sounds more like gamers’ playing QWOP than spectators gnashing their teeth over their team’s loss. Working on difficult cognitive problems are cases of reinforcement by intermittent schedules. Making tiny advances, seeing some progress, but not always advancing or progressing, despite trying to, is not in and of itself frustrating. This is just what intermittently reinforced challenges are: enticements to explore new options and to try again. As Wiles notes, one has to be able to accept “this state of being stuck. . . . [I]t’s part of the process and you have to learn to enjoy that process. . . . You have faith that over time you will understand” (as quoted on 100).
Elpidorou is entirely correct when he claims that we associate effort with value (2020, 108). However, he is incorrect that effort is unpleasant or unrewarding. Indeed, for many it is exactly the opposite. Consider mountain climbing. Elpidorou is right that the difficulty of the assents gives them value (111). However, he is wrong that “difficult [physical] challenges carry with them . . . a vast array of predominantly negative emotions and sensations. They’re painful, exhausting, frustrating, miserable, and terrifying. But it is because of the negative psychological reactions that they elicit in us that they render our activities meaningful” (111).
If we set aside the “bro-culture” that pervades extreme sports as well as pop/social media discussions of them, we learn that (not surprisingly) different people engage in extreme sports for different reasons (personal conversation). The top athletes do it because they enjoy the process and, like the gamers and mathematicians, want to perfect their skills. Others want to feel special by being different. Still others want to see how hard they can push their bodies before they fail. Finally, some want membership in an exclusive club. This is not to say that no moment in an endurance event could be painful, exhausting, frustrating, miserable, or terrifying. There definitely can be. But that is not the predominant experience for those who regularly engage in these sports. Indeed, those who are the best at any of the endurance sports are just like any other expert in a field: they focus on planning, strategy, skills-building, and improvement. That is, they focus on how changes in the environment should impact their behavior. They do not focus on how much pain or suffering they may have endured. They are not motivated by negative psychological reactions. Rather, like Wiles, they truly enjoy the process as a learning experience. And like most of us, they are inspired by value-laden and meaningful challenges. They are motivated by perceived unexpected non-rewards and not by any perceived unanticipated and aversive punishments.
In conclusion, I deny Elpidorou’s assessment that “Life is hard and frustrating. Because of that, it’s one that’s worth having” (2020, 112). For some, life is hard and frustrating. But our sense of a life worth living comes from
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putting effort into what we value and having that effort at least occasionally reward us. But if life is just one frustration after another, then humans become focused on the emotional reaction itself instead of on how to manage the shifting environment. They shut down, stop trying, lash out, and give up.
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Notes
[1] As a side note, one can also see differences in brain responses to these two different types of reactions to extended pain (Baliki et al. 2011), which, interestingly, correlate with ability to process rewards (Baliki et al. 2010).
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References
Amsel, A. 1992. Frustration Theory: An Analysis of Dispositional Learning and Memory. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Baliki, M. N., P. Y. Geha, H. L. Fields, and A. V. Apkarian. 2010. “Predicting Value of Pain and Analgesia: Nucleus Accumbens Response to Noxious Stimuli Changes in the Presence of Chronic Pain.” Neuron 66: 149-160.
Baliki, M. N., T. J. Schnitzer, W. R. Bauer, and V. Apkarian. 2011. “Brain Morphological Signatures For Chronic Pain.” PLoS ONE 6: e26010.
Bernstein, C., A. Kacelnik, and J. R. Krebs. 1991. “Individual Decisions and the Distribution of Predators in a Patchy Environment.” Journal of Animal Ecology 60, no. 1: 205-225.
Cole, J. 2016. Losing Touch: A Man without His Body. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Elpidorou, A. 2020. Propelled: How Boredom, Frustration, and Anticipation Lead Us to the Good Life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Flaherty, C. F. 1996. Incentive Relativity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Gallup, G. G., Jr. 1965. “Aggression in Rats as a Function of Frustrative Nonreward in a Straight Alley.” Psychonomic Science 3: 99-100.
Miltenberger, R.G. 2008. Behavioral Modification: Principles and Procedures. 6th edition. Boston, MA:Cengage Learning.
Mustaca, A. E., and C. Martínez. 2000. “Respuestas Agonísticas en Ratas Sometidas a Frustración.” Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología 32: 485-504.
Papini, M.R. 2003. “Comparative Psychology of Surprising Nonreward.” Brain and Behavioral Evolution 62: 82-95.
Papini, M.R. 2006. Role of Surprising Nonreward in Associative Learning. Japanese Journal of Animal Psychology 56: 35-43.
Riemner, S., H. Thompson, and O. H. P. Burman. 2018. “Behavioural Responses to Unexpected Changes in Reward Quality.” Nature 8:16652.
Singh, S. 1997. Fermat’s Last Theorum. New York, NY: Harper Collins.
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Valerie Hardcastle © 2022.
Author email: hardcastle[at]nku.edu
