Reward dependence is characterized as a tendency to respond markedly to signals of reward, particularly to verbal signals of social approval, social support, and sentiment, and learning to maintain and pursue behaviors which were previously associated with such rewards. When reward dependence levels deviate from normal we see the rise of several personality and addictive disorders.
In psychology, reward dependence is considered a moderately heritable personality trait which is stable throughout our lives. It is an inherited neurophysiological mechanism that drives our perception of our society and the environment. Even though we are born with these personality traits, their expression during our life span can be modulated throughout our development.
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Famous quotes containing the words reward and/or dependence:
“That is the real pivot of all bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional, procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions and all the activities of the procreative body were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression. That is the great clue to bourgeois psychology: the reward business.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)