Incentive Relativity

Incentive Relativity summarizes the early history of research on the effects of reward magnitude on animal behaviour, emphasizing those studies that led to recognition that rewards have relative, as well as absolute, effects. Recent research is presented in terms of three basic situations in which relativity or contrast effects occur: changing abruptly from an expected reward to a differently valued one (successive contrast); temporarily pairing two rewards of different value on a regular, daily basis (anticipatory contrast); and contrast that occurs during the course of discrimination…