I don&#x27;t know about that. It should be fairly easy to study (and hence replicate).<p>1. Find a group of animals (preferably humans, but dogs, rats, pigeons, etc. should also work just fine).<p>2. Target a specific unnecessary behavior pattern (hobby) that all individual engage in.<p>3. Measure the baseline rate of that activity.<p>4. Introduce a reward:<p>4a. For a randomly selected subset the reward follows imminently the targeted behavior.<p>4b. For the rest they&#x27;ll receive the &quot;reward&quot; equally often but at a time independent of the targeted behavior.<p>5. Drop the reward.<p>6. Let some time pass.<p>7. Measure the drop&#x2F;increase in the behavior from the baseline measure.<p>---<p>[edit] format.