We probably all have this experience-open an app and wanted to swipe it for 15 minutes before going to bed, but accidentally swiped it until dawn. After being ruthlessly uninstalled, after a while, I couldn’t help but install it back, and couldn’t stop at all.
Everyone can feel the appeal of mobile phones, but it is difficult to quantify it. Previously, we had compiled a foreign data report. The data shows that the average number of times people press, slide and click on their mobile phones per day is 2,617. The light-up time of the mobile phone screen of ordinary users is 2.42 hours, and that of heavy users is 3.75 hours.
Why are products on mobile phones so addictive? This war of desire actually has a strong relationship with the human brain. Neuroscientist David Linden has explained to us through a series of experiments that all “addiction” behaviors are caused by pleasure circuits in the brain.
Today’s low-key reading, we will talk about addiction based on the book “The Pleasure Circuit”. Tell you why people become addicted? How can people be addicted? And how to create addictive products. Below, Enjoy~
1. Why do people become addicted?
1. Addiction can release dopamine
Addictive behaviors include food, gambling, game consoles, drugs, and other compulsive behaviors. What is it that drives us to pursue these sources of pleasure, repeatedly chasing more pleasures, and even becoming more and more dissatisfied, falling into an inextricable abyss and becoming “addicts” of sweets, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine?
In fact, the main battlefield of this war of desire is not the human senses, nor the external environment, but the pleasure circuit of the inner forebrain bundle of the human brain. Addictive behavior can activate the pleasure circuit of the medial forebrain bundle of the brain, causing the target area of the ventral tegmental area to release dopamine. It is these dopamines that make us happy.
The pursuit of happiness is human instinct . Driven by the pleasure circuit, everyone is desperately pursuing and controlling happiness. Once you get happiness, you want to keep it for a long time. This is addiction.
2. Addiction is a way of learning
Addiction is not formed overnight, but the result of accumulation over time. Once we get pleasure from an addictive behavior, we associate this behavior with the subsequent pleasure. After repeating it several times, our brains are constantly stimulated, and we get satisfaction over and over again. Over time, it will lead to “behavioral addiction.”
As Neil Aiyar said: “When the brain tries to take shortcuts instead of actively thinking about what to do next, a habit is formed.”
During the development of addiction, tolerance, dependence, and desire will appear. Pleasure gradually disappears. Pleasure is replaced by desire, and liking becomes desire. Once the trajectory of addiction is formed, pleasure will be suppressed and desire will prevail.
2. How addictive?
After understanding the biological basis of addiction, let’s talk about how to manipulate addiction.
If you want to be addictive, you must activate the pleasure circuit inside the brain. David Linden has shown through experiments that each of the six ways of information, games, gambling, donation, eating, and exercise can activate the pleasure circuit in our brains, make us feel good, and make us addicted.
1. Information
Human beings rely on information for profit. They naturally like news, gossip, and rumors, and want to know this information immediately, rather than later. This information can activate a person’s pleasure circuit and secrete dopamine. Fresh information is always exciting, and humans are addicted to information.
Especially in the era of information explosion, we spend a lot of time on surfing the Internet every day, but our hearts are still not at ease, and we always feel that we are missing information. Once you forget your mobile phone or disconnect from the Internet, you will feel extremely uncomfortable, become anxious, impetuous, always worried about missing important information and news, and afraid of negatively affecting your work. This is actually a kind of information. Addiction.
2. Games
Nietzsche said, “Real men desire two different things: danger and games.”
Games can activate the pleasure circuit of almost all players to some extent, perhaps because video games trigger a general sense of pleasure related to goal achievement and personal participation, or because many video games provide very efficient rewards : just like Smoking, although the moment of happiness is short, this happiness can be started immediately and can be repeated continuously.
3. Gambling
Human brains are born to pursue uncertain pleasures , so humans are born to get pleasure from adventurous events. We love that gambling does not require the initial reward, but the fact that “unsure of receiving the reward” is inherently pleasant.
In addition, winning money can also activate a person’s pleasure circuit. A dollar picked up on the road is more satisfying than a hard-earned 99 yuan, and money won from a gambling table or the stock market is more pleasing.
4. Donate
There is a theory that some people’s charitable behavior is because they can get satisfaction from public welfare. They only care about how much help they provide to the public, not the process. If they replace voluntary donations with mandatory taxes, they can also get a sense of pleasure. Another theory is that people like to choose to pay according to their own will, and get a sense of dominance from it, so mandatory tax payment cannot produce “warm brilliance.”
Experiments have proved that both donations and taxes can activate the pleasure circuit and make people feel happy. But on average, donations trigger the activation of the pleasure center more strongly than taxes. NBA star James is a model of being addicted to charity. His accumulated donations are close to his total salary, because “charity makes me happy, charity makes me addicted.” (Homepage Jun once interviewed a star and said that he paid taxes. It gives him a sense of accomplishment-well, the homepage does not understand this sense of accomplishment)
5. Eating
Eating can induce a surge in dopamine secretion and produce a sense of pleasure. Among them, the combination of fat and sugar is the most addictive . They stimulate the pleasure circuit more strongly than eating any of them alone. When humans consume foods high in fat, sugar, and calories, the ventral tegmental area of the brain will be activated, and the target area will also release a large amount of dopamine. The huge, rapidly rising pleasure signal is the biggest reward and the easiest to make people. Addictive.
Eating is no longer to fill the stomach, but to fill the spirit.
6. Exercise
Exercise can increase the levels of opioid peptides and endocannabinoids in the brain, and opioid peptides and endocannabinoids can indirectly activate dopamine cells in the ventral tegmental area, thereby stimulating the pleasure circuit of the medial forebrain tract, so exercise can Addictive.
But some people may be too addicted to exercise. They care too much about their body shape or weight. If they do not reach their exercise goals in a day, they will feel guilty.
3. How to create addictive products?
In the era of “attention economy”, companies that continue to attract and control the total amount of human attention will gain hegemony in the world economy.
The design ideas of Internet products can also use the brain’s “addiction” mechanism-let the brain be constantly stimulated by new things, get a sense of satisfaction again and again, and fall into continuous excitement and anticipation for more stimuli.
Based on the principle of addiction, we have observed many successful cases and summed up the following methods. Clever use of these weaknesses in human nature can make products have “magic power” that people can’t stop.
1. Trigger user motivation
The first step in addiction is to trigger users to use your product, which is “triggered.” To attract users to trigger, you need to think about the following dimensions: when, where, and how will they use the product? What kind of emotions will motivate them to use the product and trigger action?
The app can be bundled with specific moments in daily life to form a conditioned reflex. For example, during exercise, many people will open apps to record time and calories, while in boring fragmented time, many people will open short video apps to pass the time and quickly gain happiness.
2. Continuously attract users’ attention
Under the bombardment of information, human attention has become the most precious asset. Whoever can win it will be invincible. According to the law that information can activate people’s pleasure loops, bright and bright colors can be added when designing products, information can be set to waterfall, and automatic buffering mechanism can be turned on- there is no stopping point for information, once interesting articles, information, and pictures are brushed , Video, the brain will release dopamine signals to make you look forward to: there will be more fresh and fun content when you scroll down.
This sense of expectation stimulates users to continue to scan the information stream. The more they do it, the more dopamine is secreted by the brain, which is more and more exciting. Many people become addicted to the information stream invisibly. Products such as Facebook and twitter use such a mechanism. The more intimate contact users have with the product, the more they can’t do without it.
3. Shorten the time for users to get stimulation
According to the principle of dopamine secretion, the shorter the stimulation, the higher the probability of addiction. In order to shorten the time required for users to obtain stimulation, the individual content duration of the product can be shortened, and short videos can be used to replace long videos, short messages to replace long-form discussions, and small games to replace large-scale games. In this way, happiness can start immediately, and it can be repeated over and over again.
At the moment when entertainment resources are overloaded, by cutting into ordinary users with fragmented time, the addiction mechanism can be used to turn fragmented users into heavy users. At present, the short video products launched in China have a single video duration of about 15 seconds, which can continuously refresh new content, which is to shorten the stimulation time and increase the frequency with which users obtain stimulation.
4. Increase uncertain feedback
Humans love to stimulate the secretion of dopamine by participating in gambling activities. Adding this kind of uncertain return with a gambling nature to the product design, including material rewards such as red envelopes and redemption coupons, and obtaining spiritual rewards such as the attention, comments and likes of others can bring about amplifying the expected effect. The unpredictability and randomness of returns are the main motivations that attract players to try again and again.
Product design can add random fresh events, easter eggs or red envelopes, which can make the product more interesting and attract users to participate. The behavior of setting random red envelope subsidies in many products uses this mechanism. The lottery with all the cards used the same principle: Since it is impossible to know the amount of rewards that can be obtained in advance, it strongly activates people’s sense of participation.
5. Introduce competition mechanism
A large part of the reason why games can strongly stimulate people’s pleasure circuit is the sense of competition in the game . For example, the “territorial expansion” type of video game is particularly attractive to men, because it produces a pleasure of occupation and conquest, which is addictive .
At present, many competition rankings in mobile games, sports rankings, etc., are all clever use of people’s subconscious pursuit of the pleasure of competition.
6. Increase user input
To retain users, you can glue the time and energy that users have invested to the platform. In this way, users will be more immersed in the platform, forming a circular mechanism. Such as registered accounts, trophies, medals, titles, accumulated gold coin crystals, friend list network, social support, and charity, etc. If the user does not complete the daily tasks according to the predetermined goals, he can set a penalty mechanism, lose the opportunity to unlock the corresponding rewards, and start over.
The more intimate contact users have with the product, the more they can’t do without it. The process of liking a product is the process of falling in love with the product.
Finally, we would like to quote a famous saying in “Don Quixote”, “The bow cannot be bent forever. If there is no legal entertainment, the human nature or the weakness of human nature will be difficult to survive.” Use these addictive characteristics, you can. Let your products have the “magic” that people can’t stop.
