title: Optimal indolence: a normative microscopic approach to work and leisure.
abstract: Dividing limited time between work and leisure when both have their attractions is a common everyday decision. We provide a normative control-theoretic treatment of this decision that bridges economic and psychological accounts. We show how our framework applies to free-operant behavioural experiments in which subjects are required to work (depressing a lever) for sufficient total time (called the price) to receive a reward. When the microscopic benefit-of-leisure increases nonlinearly with duration, the model generates behaviour that qualitatively matches various microfeatures of subjects' choices, including the distribution of leisure bout durations as a function of the pay-off. We relate our model to traditional accounts by deriving macroscopic, molar, quantities from microscopic choices.
authors.affiliation: Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, , London, UK.
authors.forename: Ritwik K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Niyogi
authors.forename: Yannick-Andre
authors.initials: YA
authors.lastname: Breton
authors.forename: Rebecca B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Solomon
authors.forename: Kent
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Conover
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shizgal
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dayan
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001519:Behavior; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D007899:Leisure Activities; D008390:Markov Chains; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011336:Probability; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012201:Reward; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: economics; leisure; microscopic; normative; reinforcement learning; work