OPPORTUNITY, A REWARD IN ITSELF

             The next time you here a money-maker say, “This opportunity feels good” you better listen. Many money-makers are conditioned from their youth to feel pleasure when they find an opportunity to make money. Money-makers are conditioned to feel pleasure when they see or hear about financial opportunities, and even the thought of an opportunity stimulates the reward system of the brain.

            Through studies of motivation we’ve learned that reward pathways in the brain are stimulated naturally through our peripheral senses (sight, sound, touch, smell) in the same way that a drug induced “high” satisfies an addict’s appetite for drugs. These pleasure signals are conditioned early in life and programmed to stimulate the reward system of the brain. David Linden a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University (2011) states, “It is important to realize that our pleasure circuits are the result of a combination of genetics, stress, and life experience, beginning as early as the womb.” The conditioned response can at times be so strong that it overrides basic drives such as food, water, and sex. Experiments show that when subjects are given a choice between food and brain stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus they chose the pleasure of the stimulation over food (Routtenberg & Lindy, 1965). The lateral hypothalamus contains a bundle of dopamine rich neurons and when it is stimulated by a rewarding experience it induces the greatest amount of pleasure and drive (Wise, 2002). Neuroeconomics is taking a hard look at reward seeking emotional behavior and the research reveals that the mesolimbic dopamine system (MLDS) modulates instincts by reinforcing or decreasing motivation in learning as well as decision-making (Alcaro, et al., 2007).

            What this means for the money-maker is that the pleasure they feel when they see an opportunity to make money is a conditioned response.  In many cases the stimulus is so powerful that it drives their behavior to the extent that they can think of little else than the opportunity before them. This may in part explain why money-makers have an aversion to market statics and business plans; because they don’t plan for opportunity they feel it.