The pursuit of happiness: A reinforcement learning perspective on habituation and comparisons.

ABSTRACT: In evaluating our choices, we often suffer from two tragic relativities. First, when our lives change for the better, we rapidly habituate to the higher standard of living. Second, we cannot escape comparing ourselves to various relative standards. Habituation and comparisons can be very disruptive to decision-making and happiness, and till date, it remains a puzzle why they have come to be a part of cognition in the first place. Here, we present computational evidence that suggests that these features might play an important role in promoting adaptive behavior. Using the framework of reinforcement learning, we explore the benefit of employing a reward function that, in addition to the reward provided by the underlying task, also depends on prior expectations and relative comparisons. We f

SUBMITTER: Dubey R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9352009 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature