Page 290 - Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

* e discover y of variable rewards happened by accident. One day in the
lab, the famous Har vard psychologist B. F. Skinner was running low on food

pellets during one exper iment and making more was a time-consuming
process because he had to manually press the pellets in a machine. is
situation led him to “ask myself why ever y press of the lever had to be
reinforced.” He decided to only give treats to the rats inter mittently and, to
his surprise, var ying the deliver y of food did not decrease behavior, but

actually increased it.