The revelation first began seemingly by accident when a very prolific and controversial American scientist named Harry Harlow was studying problem-solving abilities of rhesus monkeys, a common subject of his experiments. The story goes that Harlow noticed that his subject monkeys would continue to play with mechanical puzzles before and after the planned experiment — in the absence of typical reward (food). Essentially, the monkey’s learned for the sake of learning. This went against the conventional wisdom that positive reinforcement would undeniably shape behaviour positively (to the desired outcome). Dually astounding, when a positive reward was introduced to try to reinforce the ‘playing’ (exploration), it had an extinguishing effect on behaviour. More simply, when the subject monkeys were encouraged or rewarded to play, they for some reason lost interest and stopped playing. This counterintuitive observation and eventual proven phenomenon went against everything scientists thought about root motivation, which was generally thought to serve some physiological purpose whether direct or not. This exploratory behaviour was coined ‘intrinsic motivation’ by Harlow, and it is the crux of our engagement model.

The New · Intrinsic Motivation

Harry Harlow first coined the term intrinsic motivation, but psychologist Edward Deci, and Richard Ryan dedicated their lives to studying it. Here is their standard definition from their 2000 paper titled, Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being:

Intrinsic motivation refers to the spontaneous tendency “to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacity, to explore, and to learn” (Ryan and Deci, 2000, p.70).

Exercise, games, travel, reading, and even watching TV all satisfy the seeking system to varying levels of effortful operation. On one side of the spectrum someone could climb Mount Everest, and on the other they could browse Netflix. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp defines this exploratory behaviour as being driven by the organisms innate seeking system. To reiterate, the anomaly behind seeking is that it provides seemingly very little utilitarian value — it does not fulfil some physiological needs deficit, but we do it anyway. We create our own value from within. Also fascinating, we now know that organisms behave in intrinsically motivated ways even when they are lacking ‘basic’ needs such as food, water, or shelter. How many times have you seen a homeless person reading a book? Do you think they’re practising for a job interview? No, they’re seeking.

Designing for the Seeking System

Companies know that humans are actively seeking new, novel stuff all the time. That’s what makes the internet such an engaging tool — it gives one the ability, at their fingertips, to exercise their seeking system instantaneously and infinitely. Travel is another way humans exercise this trait, and again one of the largest economic drivers in first world countries. Although these are human examples, the seeking system is not a uniquely human trait — all animals have a seeking system.

Television is a prime example of a tool that really exercises our seeking system in the home. Especially with the advent of the remote control, users can remain in a constant seeking state without interruption. Now, we have tools like Netflix, where users can browse a seemingly infinite amount of content through a multitude of filters (cover art also adds to engagement). How many times have you browsed Netflix for seemingly too long? The fact is that humans get enjoyment out of looking at images and making judgements about the content they have yet to watch. Anticipation and imagination have value, and again these come from within. The satisfaction one gets from seeing new things seems to dramatically increase with dynamic ‘social’ content. For example, social media platforms give you a constant stream of information plus the ability to interact/express yourself with the contributors of that information. This is what makes tools like Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder so irresistible, and brings us to our next component of addictive product design — social affects as reinforcement.

Social Affects as Reinforcement

Social affects are very powerful behavioural reinforcers, and actually work to enhance ‘seeking’ behaviours, unlike extrinsic rewards. Affects are the social cues — the smile, frown, posturing that humans do to express their feelings (unconscious communication tool). Most have experienced how good or bad it feels to be warmly introduced or rightfully screw-faced, and I’m sure this body language had an impact on your future behaviour. Social media harnesses this phenomenon by allowing users to show their approval by liking, sharing, retweeting, commenting, or matching with the content they’ve seen.

An important feature of affective reinforcement in social media, is that displaying your approval is much easier than displaying your disapproval (there is no ‘not-like’ button). These means that there is generally more reward than punishment in the social media feedback ecosystem, and the negative consequences of disliked behaviour is arguably very nominal. This all adds to the reinforcement that these platforms want. They want you to keep creating content. This is a dream business model because the users do all the work (contributions), while you (the business) just sets up the discovery and reward mechanisms. With social media, users chase that dopamine hit they get when someone ‘likes’ their expressions, and these ‘likes’ reinforce this expressive behaviour leading to this vicious cycle of engagement.

*Addiction Tip · Variable, Intermittent Rewards

Would fishing be fun, if every time you tossed in the line, you caught something? The incredibly complex answer to that question is, no. Something weird happens to us when there is randomness to reinforcement — it makes us even more likely to repeat behaviour despite a ‘lag’ or hiccup in the reinforcement stream. Casino’s know this, and it’s exactly why gambling is so addictive. People chase highs, and the highs become more pronounce in the face of loss. Imagine if every time you gambled, you received a nominal but positive payment that was of equal value, every time? It wouldn’t be fun. Even though it would be more practically rewarding (you come out on top), you would eventually get bored, realize you can always go back to this constant stream of revenue, and go do something else.