The pleasure center and the altruism center often interact by competing for control. The pleasure center, however, almost always wins. The teachers at the high school in Ann Arbor, for example, when offered an incentive, the students performed worse and attendance went down slightly. Their motives became self-serving rather than for the greater good. As a result of this shift, teachers began trying to get more students to show up to class, rather than teaching. The teachers began to care more about the reward instead of helping the students, “they became fixated on a reward and unknowingly altered their standards, goals, and conduct in the process” (147).
