quiet-the-power-of-introverts-in-a-world-that-cant-stop-talking-susan-cain

But sometimes we’re too sensitive to
rewards. Reward sensitivity on overdrive
gets people into all kinds of
trouble. We can get so excited by the
prospect of juicy prizes, like winning
big in the stock market, that we take
outsized risks and ignore obvious warning
signals.
Alan was presented with plenty of
these signals, but was so animated by
the prospect of winning big that he
couldn’t see them. Indeed, he fell into a
classic pattern of reward sensitivity run
amok: at exactly the moments when the
warning signs suggested slowing down,
he sped up—dumping money he
couldn’t afford to lose into a speculative
series of trades.
Financial history is full of examples
of players accelerating when they
should be braking. Behavioral economists
have long observed that executives
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