To your brain, there are many similarities between gambling and love. They are both an exciting chemical high with a mixture of hope, profits, and potential for loss. Both love and Las Vegas can be intoxicating. But there is another secret way that gambling resembles certain kinds of love attachment — both are based on a behavioral learning theory called random interval reward system.
Learning theorists like Pavlov (and his dog,) Watson, and Skinner spent their professional lives attempting to figure out what motivates animal and human behavior. One of the things that was discovered is that the most effective way to get an organism (that’s you) addicted to a behavior was to administer the reward in a random way. The recipient of the reward doesn’t know when or what is coming but the very the fact that it is random and pleasurable makes them glued to the behavior. This is the basic principle behind a slot machine. Say you were given a consistent, small reward with every fifth pull of the level. You would probably quickly become bored and move on. And if the reward was exactly one-dollar each time, even though it was given at random intervals, still you would eventually become bored.
The secret is the varying size of the reward and varying the interval rate. If on the tenth pull, for instance, you received a nice pay off, your brain would have “learned” to survive ten pulls. To keep you going, a series of small payoffs might come quickly. In this example, the machine knows that you will continue to deposit money for at least ten pulls if it has rewarded you at least once in that manner. Believe me, the owners of Vegas casinos have calculated all these odds years ago, and they know how to set the random intervals to keep the player addicted to popping in coins. Surprise, surprise, the house always wins.
So what has this got to do with love and courtship? Well, imagine that every contact, compliment, or even intimate glance from a lover is perceived by your brain as a positive reward. Now imagine that it is given in a random way. I like to call this the “Bad Boy Success Formula.” Bad Boys are particularly good at using the random interval reward system. And bad Boys are very seductive to women. It’s because a Bad Boy’s fear of emotional intimacy causes him to dash in and out of a woman’s life in what feels like a random way. In actuality, his pattern of advance/retreat is a reflection of how much emotional intimacy he can tolerate, but who’s looking below the surface when you’re staring at the phone wondering why he hasn’t called?
Each time a Bad Boy feels it is safe to return to a woman, their object is usually to obtain physical intimacy. Since sex is their goal they are particularly savvy at coming on with compliments and making their target feel like a queen — all rewards that women thrive on. Bad Boys are also the very best apologizers I have even met. The apology is part of their schtick to wedge back in your door. Sometimes their words of contrition resemble a kind of emotional intimacy so chicks fall for it, again and again.
But Bad Boys aside, the very uncertainty of a growing relationship with it’s emotional highs coupled with feelings of insecurity, can cause a kind of attachment based on a reward system. Something to think about as you date. Are you getting bored with the nice guys or consistent gals who are on time and available? Maybe that’s because your brain has tasted the pain and excitement of a random interval reward relationship. It might be time to sit back, take a deep breath, and look a little closer at the consistent one. The ultimate pay out might be much greater.