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Related Experiment Videos

Economic demand and essential value.

Steven R Hursh1, Alan Silberberg

  • 1Institutes for Behavior Resources, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. srhursh@ibrinc.org

Psychological Review
|January 24, 2008
PubMed
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Behavioral economics offers a new way to measure the essential value of reinforcers, overcoming limitations of previous methods. This approach uses demand curves to determine reinforcer strength independent of consumption.

Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Economics
  • Psychology
  • Animal Behavior

Background:

  • Early research by B.F. Skinner proposed response frequency as a measure of reflex strength.
  • Subsequent studies revealed response frequency is influenced by reinforcer properties and schedule effects, complicating its use as a sole index.
  • A need exists for a method to measure reinforcer strength independent of these confounding factors.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To introduce a novel method for measuring the essential value of reinforcers using principles from behavioral economics.
  • To overcome the limitations of using response frequency to index reflex strength.
  • To provide a scalable measure of reinforcer value that allows for comparisons across different types of reinforcers.

Main Methods:

  • Utilizing demand curve analysis from behavioral economics to quantify reinforcer value.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Modeling the relationship between reinforcer price (ratio schedules) and consumption using an exponential equation.
  • Deriving the essential value of a reinforcer from the rate constant of the fitted exponential demand curve.

    • Main Results:

    • The exponential demand curve model effectively maps how reinforcer consumption changes with increasing price.
    • The rate constant derived from this model provides a measure of essential value, independent of reinforcer quantity or quality.
    • This method allows for the objective comparison of the essential value of different reinforcers.

    Conclusions:

    • Behavioral economics provides a robust framework for measuring the essential value of reinforcers.
    • The proposed method using demand curves and an exponential model overcomes previous limitations in assessing reflex strength.
    • This approach facilitates the direct comparison of diverse reinforcers, advancing the goal of a universal scale for reinforcer value.