The Effects of Reward Networks on Motivation

One of the things humans tend to do when they watch somebody else having an emotional experience is that they tend to mirror that experience in their own brain. In some studies, depending on the nature of the person in the out-group, you can in fact find some reward associated with watching your competitors fail. So our motivations are really attuned to whether someone is in-group or out-group. That's one of the effects. We're happy when an in-group member wins and unhappy when they win. But then that reverses for out-group members. And what we can find is that if I'm looking at members of a group that's like me, the patterns associated with