Den globala finanskrisen har lämnat spår inom den finansiella industrin och svenskaekonomin. Effekten var så stor att den påverkade hela samhället. Bankernas bonusar är kändasom en av orsakerna till krisen som har väckt enorm uppmärksamhet och har skapat debatt imedia och regering där bonusutbetalningarna blivit kritiserade. Bonus eller rörlig ersättninganvänds för att uppnå ett bättre resultat, men hur kan de betalas ut trots förluster? Dettaväckte vårt intresse och vi har genom denna uppsats försökt att undersöka samt få enförståelse för motivet bakom bankernas bonussystem. För att uppnå syftet, har vi undersökt defyra svenska storbankernas bonussystem, hur de är utformade samt varför bonusar är denvanligaste belöningsformen inom bankbranschen. Den forskningsstrategi som används är ettkvalitativt sätt där vi samlat in information som berör bonussystemen från bankernasårsredovisningar för 2011, vetenskapliga artiklar, kurslitteratur, facklitteratur och mediasdebattartiklar. Vi har kommit fram till att bonusar är den vanligaste belöningen bland de fyrabanker med avseende på: typ av bransch, bankernas övergripande mål, arbetsuppgifternaskaraktär, vikten av kompetent personal och en hög konkurrens. Samt att syftet medersättningarna är att behålla nyckelpersonal, medarbetares kompetens, konkurrens omattraktiva medarbetare och skapa värde för aktieägarna.

Inspired by the theoretical power of rewards in the labor market, to improve educational outcomes, this paper tests if giving a non-financial reward along with a financial one can result in higher student ex-post outcomes than just a financial incentive. The underlying mechanism by which non-financial reward might work is explored as well. The argument is based on Benabou and Tirole (2002)’s model, that non-financial reward may affect teachers’ self-esteem and, with that, their effort, and thereby the student outcomes after the reward is given. This is accomplished by exploiting a discontinuity in the running variable used to assign the Teaching Excellence Award (AEP for its initials in Spanish). A Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design is used to identify the effect of AEP using data for more than 5,000 math and language teachers. The dataset includes the teaching evaluation score that AEP gives every year to their applicants, the corresponding standardized test score of more than 100,000 students, (SIMCE for its initials in Spanish), school characteristics, and information about motivation and self-perception that teachers self-report in a survey administrated by SIMCE along with the standardized test every year. The results show that rewarding teachers by giving a non-financial reward along with a financial one does not work in the intended way. I find a not statistically significant effect of giving a reward to teachers with outstanding teaching skills and pedagogical knowledge on student test scores, teaching practices, teacher’s self-confidence in a window of three years after the certification process. Lastly, there is no evidence of teacher-student or teacher-school sorting as an ex-post effect of obtaining the certification.

In this thesis, I investigated computational and neural mechanisms underlying foraging-related behavior in humans. A consideration of the ecological constraints under which mammalian behavior first evolved guided my investigation of learning and decision-making in frontal cortex. When engaged in foraging, animals have to figure out how profitable their actions are and whether it is better to continue foraging in their current environment or to switch to an alternative. They have to track the reward income of their actions over time and also take into account that the actions of other foraging animals have a direct influence on their reward income (Chapter 1). Based on these observations, I looked at similar types of behavior in humans using computational modeling and functional magnetic resonance imaging. I studied how people evaluate the profitability of their actions over time (Chapter 2). Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex carried a detailed representation of the value of the current foraging action, which was influenced by reward memories with different time constants (Chapter 3). Tracking the reward income of one's actions is not only important in order to learn about the profitability of the environment, it can also inform estimates of one's own and other people's abilities. Ability estimates can be used in a direct way to predict the reward outcome that the actions of one's own self and others will have. I found that people learn about their own and others' abilities in a rational manner but also that ability estimates of self and other were partly confused with each other, depending on whether subjects cooperated or competed with each other (Chapter 4). The confusion effect is reflected in Brodmann area 9 activity indicating that area 9 integrates self and other related information. Perigenual anterior cingulate tracked the ability estimates for oneself, suggesting that it might compute the success expectation of an action independent of particular features of the environment (Chapter 5). In sum, different subregions of medial frontal cortex carried different types of action-related value representations that can guide decision-making.

Notre travail porte sur l'adaptation du comportement humain dans un environnement où les récompenses obtenues sont distribuées sur une échelle continue. Les travaux précédents se sont principalement intéressés aux cas de récompenses binaires (de type gagné/perdu) et ont montré qu'un algorithme d'apprentissage Bayésien pouvait rendre compte du comportement. Les algorithmes Bayésiens ne marchent pas dans un environnement continu à moins d'utiliser un modèle génératif (une série d'axiomes permettant de cadrer l'interprétation des observations). A l'inverse les algorithmes de renforcement s'y comportent bien car ils peuvent efficacement s'ajuster aux moyennes de distributions de récompense. Que fait donc l'humain ? Un modèle génératif usuel considère que les distributions de récompense associées à chaque action sont Gaussiennes. Un petit nombre d'observations permet de les caractériser en inférant leur moyenne et écart type. Nous proposons un modèle plus général postulant l'existence d'un classement stable de la valeur des différentes actions, ce qui permet d'imaginer la récompense fictive qui aurait été attribuée par les actions non choisies. Pour séparer ces deux modèles ainsi que le renforcement, nous avons construit 3 expériences comportementales dans lesquelles les distributions de récompenses sont bimodales et continues. Notre modèle rend compte du comportement des sujets à l’inverse du modèle Gaussien ou du renforcement. Notre modèle répond à des contraintes évolutionnistes car il s’adapte rapidement dans un grand nombre de contextes, y compris ceux ou les axiomes du modèle génératif ne sont pas respectés, pour déterminer à chaque fois quelles récompenses sont désirables. / Our thesis aims at understanding how human behavior adapts to an environment where rewards are continuous. Many works have studied environments with binary rewards (win/lose) and have shown that human behavior could be accounted for by Bayesian inference algorithms. A Bayesian algorithm works in a continuous environment provided that it is based on a “generative” model of the environment, which is a structural assumption about environmental contingencies. The issue we address in this thesis is to characterize which kind of generative model of continuous rewards characterizes human decision-making. One hypothesis is to consider that each action attributes rewards as noisy samples of the true action value, typically distributed as a Gaussian distribution. We propose instead a generative model using assumptions about the relationship between the values of the different actions available and the existence of a reliable ordering of action values. This structural assumption enables to simulate mentally counterfactual rewards and to learn simultaneously reward distributions associated with all actions. To validate our model, we ran three behavioral experiments on healthy subjects in a setting where actions’ reward distributions were continuous and changed across time. Our proposed model described correctly participants’ behavior in all three tasks, while other competitive models, including Gaussian failed. The proposed model extends the implementation of Bayesian algorithms and establishes which rewards are “good” and desirable according to the current context. It answers to evolutionarily constraints by adapting quickly, while performing correctly in many different settings.

Paclitaxel, vincristine, oxaliplatin, and bortezomib are cancer chemotherapy drugs with adverse effects that include chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain (CINP) as well as depression of behavior and mood. In the clinical setting, opioids are often used concurrently with or following chemotherapy to treat pain related to the cancer or CINP, but repeated opioid exposure can also increase the risk of opioid abuse. This dissertation evaluated the effect of chemotherapy treatment on motivated behaviors and opioid reward in rats. The main findings of this evaluation are as follows: (1) Chemotherapy, at doses that produce robust and sustained mechanical hypersensitivity produce only weak or nonexistent depression of positively reinforced operant responding maintained either by electrical brain stimulation in an assay of intracranial self-stimulation or by food pellets in an assay of food-maintained responding. (2) There was no correlation between the expression of mechanical hypersensitivity and depression of motivated behaviors across individual animals, suggesting that these two effects of chemotherapy do not share common mechanisms of action. (3) Mechanical hypersensitivity, but not behavioral depression could be reversed with morphine. (4) The class of chemotherapeutic used in preclinical models is a determinant of the severity of effects on neuropathy-related endpoints and on the time course of these effects. (5) Chemotherapy does not protect against the rewarding effects of repeated morphine administration and does not alter the time course of the enhancement of reward with repeated morphine exposure. These findings suggest that administration of chemotherapy to rats induces mechanical hypersensitivity while failing to decrease behaviors dependent on mesolimbic dopamine signaling or protecting against morphine abuse-related effects. While apparent that chemotherapy can produce peripheral neuropathy, the data in this dissertation does not support the hypothesis that chemotherapy can produce behavioral depressant manifestations of chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain (CINP) in rats.

Reward has been shown to improve multiple forms of learning. However, many of these studies do not distinguish whether reward directly benefits learning or if learning is boosted by modulation of top-down factors such as attention and motivation. The work outlined in this dissertation explores the modulatory effects of reward and punishment without directly manipulating top-down factors such as attention or motivation. We achieved this goal by studying the effects of reward and punishment on incidental learning – a branch of procedural learning where learning occurs without intention and through repetition. Our results reveal that reward is able to bolster incidental learning during the performance and learning of an associative task, even when awareness of how to achieve the reward is minimized (Experiments 1 and 2). However, a similar benefit was not observed in an analogous set of experiments examining the effect of punishment on incidental learning (Experiments 3 and 4). A direct comparison between the effect of reward and punishment on incidental learning revealed a significant advantage for rewarded combinations over punishment. However, this advantage was only observed when high cognitive (associative) demands were emphasized (Experiment 6), as opposed to high motor demands (Experiment 5). Finally, we explored the role of dopamine in the effect of reward on incidental learning. Because dopamine neuron dynamics have been implicated in both reward processing and in various forms of learning, we hypothesized that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), who experience an accelerated rate of death of dopamine neurons, would experience impaired learning from rewards compared to healthy older adults. Experiment 7 revealed a significant impairment in reward-related incidental learning for patients with Parkinson's disease relative to comparisons. The amount of levodopa medication taken by PD patients predicted the effect of reward, demonstrating a potential link between dopamine levels and the effect of reward on incidental learning. Together, this dissertation demonstrates that 1) reward improves incidental learning, 2) reward may be an exceptional form of feedback, as opposed to punishments, and 3) dopamine levels may potentially drive the effect of reward on incidental learning

When most omnivores and herbivores become sodium depleted they engage in the motivated behavior of sodium appetite (AKA salt appetite), or the seeking out and ingestion of salty substances. Sodium appetite is associated with psychological processes that serve to enhance the incentive and rewarding value of salty substances in order to attract animals to salty substances and reinforce the ingestion of them. The experience of sodium depletion also produces long-lasting changes in behavior; one of the most apparent changes being a seemingly life-long increase in hypertonic salt intake which indicates sodium appetite is sensitized. Two neural circuits have been implicated in the sensitization of sodium appetite: 1) a forebrain neural circuit that regulates body fluid homeostasis, and 2) the mesolimbic dopamine system which mediates motivated behaviors. This dissertation has three aims that serve the overall purpose of providing a better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate the sensitization of sodium appetite. The first aim is to develop a model of sodium depletion that is amenable to pharmacological manipulation in order to determine whether the -blockade of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors, which are critical for neural plasticity, will prevent the sensitization of sodium appetite. The second aim is to determine whether sensitization is associated with relatively long-term molecular changes in forebrain areas that regulate body fluid homeostasis. The third aim is to identify how forebrain areas involved in body fluid homeostasis may connect to and influence activity in the mesolimbic dopamine system.

Excessive sympathetic cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Many populations with a greater risk for CVD instead demonstrate blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks. The motivational intensity theory identifies how motivation and effort influence sympathetic reactivity. Blunted reactivity may be a potential index of motivational dysregulation, which leads to poor behavioral decisions such as excess smoking or alcohol use, in turn increasing the risk for CVD. The current study sought to demonstrate how inhibited effort due to poor ability feedback with a low-contingency reward could directly increase the risk for CVD through perseverative cognition and impaired recovery. Participants (N = 89) were given either poor or good feedback on a working memory task that was purported to be related to another related working memory task. Participants were then informed that they could secure a low- or high-contingency reward opportunity by meeting a performance standard. EKG, impedance cardiography, blood pressure, and pupillometry were recorded throughout. Pre-ejection period reactivity and self-reported effort were greatest in participants given good feedback with a high-contingency reward and poor feedback with a low-contingency reward. Greater effort and sympathetic reactivity support previous findings linking these two measures. The results also suggest evaluating both internal and external rewards is important when examining motivation.

No description available.

Abstract The past few decades has seen increasing agreement identifying approach and avoidance systems as central concepts in the understanding of human behaviour and personality (Carver, 2005; Carver & Scheier, 2000; Elliot, 1999, 2005). The central focus of this thesis lies in exploring the approach system. The approach system focuses on managing appetitive behaviour and represents a general sensitivity to rewarding stimuli. This system is thought to be accompanied by behavioural tendencies towards such rewarding stimuli and consequently, positive outcomes (e.g., Gable, Reis, & Elliot, 2003). This thesis will examine the approach system as portrayed firstly via the Behavioural Approach System (BAS) as part of one of the most recent and influential personality theories; Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST; Gray, 1982; Gray & Mc Naughton, 1996; Pickering & Gray, 1999) and secondly, by means of the social cognitive model of goal orientation (Diefendorff & Mehta, 2007; Dweck, 1996; Elliot & Church, 1997). The two constructs of approach goal orientations which will be chiefly discussed in this thesis are mastery approach orientation and performance approach orientation. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate these three approach constructs in interaction with situational cues and in the prediction of everyday life outcomes. Work context is an important example of everyday life situation; therefore, this thesis aims to investigate the interaction between the three approach constructs and rewarding climates (situational cues) in the prediction of work outcomes. This thesis therefore contains two parts; the first part will investigate the Behavioural Approach System (BAS) and the second part will investigate performance approach and mastery approach orientations. The first part contains two chapters -two self contained papers- and the second part contains three chapters -three self contained papersix Each paper form it’s own individual chapter. In each chapter, the controversies and ambiguities in theoretical and practical implications involved in the construct will be discussed. In addition, major findings as well as limitations and practical implications will be discussed at the end of each chapter. Following as introduction is a brief review of each chapter.