Pigeons in a cage

From The Handmaid's Tale:

I read about that in Introduction to Psychology; that, and the chapter on caged rats who'd give themselves electric shocks for something to do. And the one on the pigeons, trained to peck a button which made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a little later. The third group never gave up. They'd peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who know what worked?

I find the above excerpt exceptional. The writing style is synthetic, no words are wasted: the third paragraph lacks the main verb, but it doesn't matter. It feels like we are reading the narrator's mind. But what captured my attention is the experiment being described. It reminded me of kids fiddling with their phones, playing Brawl Stars or similar addictive games. Players clicking screens like pigeons pecking buttons. You keep clicking as you never know what you're gonna get.