by Adam Alter
Katherine Schreiber and Leslie Sim are: Information from interviews with Schreiber and Sim, and from Schreiber’s book: Katherine Schreiber, The Truth about Exercise Addiction (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015).
In 2000, Marylanders: Running Streak Association website: www.runeveryday.com/; active list of runners: www.runeveryday.com/lists/USRSA-Active-List.html; see also: Katherine Dempsey, “The People Who Can’t Not Run,” The Atlantic, June 4, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/streakers-in-sneakers/371347/; Kevin Helliker, “These Streakers Resolve to Run Every Day of the Year,” Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/these-streakers-resolve-to-run-every-day-of-the-year-1419986806.
Writing for the: Oliver Burkeman, “Want to Succeed? You Need Systems, Not Goals,” Guardian, November 7, 2014, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/07/systems-better-than—goals-oliver-burkeman. See also: Scott Adams, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (New York: Portfolio, 2014).
Sam Polk published: Background on Polk from an interview with Polk, and from his op-ed: Sam Polk, “For the Love of Money,” New York Times, January 14, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html.
CHAPTER 5: FEEDBACK
In 2012, an: Turner Benelux, “A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square,” YouTube, April 11, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=316AzLYfAzw; see also: Laura Stampler, “How TNT Made the Biggest Viral Ad of the Year—in Belgium,” Business Insider, May 15, 2012, www.businessinsider.com/how-a-belgian-agency-made-one-of-the-most-viral-videos-of-this-year-2012-5; Anthony Wing Kosner). “‘Push to Add Drama’ Video: Belgian TNT Advert Shows Virality of Manipulated Gestures,” Forbes, April 12, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/04/12/push-to-add-drama-video-belgian-tnt-advert-shows-virality-of-manipulated-gestures/#85072544803b.
This was the case: The archived “The Button” subreddit was still online as of May 2016: https://www.reddit.com/r/thebutton; more from Reddit’s blog: www.redditblog.com/2015/06/the-button-has-ended.html; see also, for example, Julianne Pepitone, “Reddit Explains the Mystery Behind ‘The Button,’” NBC, June 9, 2015, www.nbcnews.com/tech/Internet/reddit-button-n357841; Alex Hern, “Reddit’s Mysterious Button Experiment is Over,” Guardian, June 8, 2015, www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/08/reddits-mysterious-button-experiment-is-over; Rich McCormick, “How Reddit’s Mysterious April Fools’ Button Inspired Religions and Cults,” The Verge, June 9, 2015, www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8749897/reddit-april-fools-the-button-experiment-end.
In 1971, a: Michael D. Zeiler, “Fixed-Interval Behavior: Effects of Percentage Reinforcement,” Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 17, no. 2 (March 1972): 177–89. See also, Michael D. Zeiler, “Fixed and Variable Schedules of Response-Independent Reinforcement,” Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 11, no. 4 (July 1968): 405–14.
It’s hard to exaggerate: See, for example, Jason Kincaid, “Facebook Activates ‘Like’ Button; Friend Feed Tires of Sincere Flattery,” TechCrunch, February 9, 2009, techcrunch.com/2009/02/09/facebook-activates-like-button-friendfeed-tires-of-sincere-flattery/; M. G. Siegler, “Facebook: We’ll Serve 1 Billion Likes on the Web in Just 24 Hours,” TechCrunch, April 21, 2010, techcrunch.com/2010/04/21/facebook-like-button/; Erick Schonfeld, “Zuckerberg: ‘We Are Building a Web Where the Default Is Social,’” TechCrunch, April 21, 2010, techcrunch.com/2010/04/21/zuckerbergs-buildin-web-default-social/.
The app’s founder: See more on Chawla and the Lovematically app on the platform’s homepage: fueled.com/lovematically/. Dozens of outlets covered Lovematically’s brief rise and fall, e.g., Brendan O’Connor, “Lovematically: The Social Experiment That Instagram Shut Down after Two Hours,” The Daily Dot, February 17, 2014, www.dailydot.com/technology/lovematically-auto-like-instagram-shut-down/; Jeff Bercovici, “Instagram App Lovematically Highlights, and Hijacks, the Power of the ‘Like,’” Forbes, February 14, 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/02/14/instagram-app-lovematically-highlights-and-hijacks-the-power-of-the-like/#329d9c1b64b6; Lance Ulanoff, “Why I Flooded Instagram with Likes,” Mashable, February 14, 2014, mashable.com/2014/02/14/lovematically-instagram/.
I stumbled on: You can play Sign of the Zodiac here (but make sure you clear your schedule for several hours first): www.freeslots.co.uk/sign-of-the-zodiac/index.htm.
For thirteen years: Schüll’s terrific book: Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
Mike Dixon, a: Mike Dixon and others, “Losses Disguised As Wins in Modern Multi-Line Video Slot Machines,” Addiction 105, no. 10 (October 2010): 1819–24.
Bennett Foddy, who: You can find Foddy’s game archive here: www.foddy.net/.
The game Candy: See, e.g., Joe White, “Freemium App Candy Crush Saga Earns a Record-Breaking $633,000 Each Day,” AppAdvice. July 9, 2013, appadvice.com/appnn/2013/07/freemium-app-candy-crush-saga-earns-a-record-breaking-633000-each-day; Andrew Webster, “Half a Billion People Have Installed ‘Candy Crush Saga,’” The Verge, November 5, 2013, www.theverge.com/2013/11/15/5107794/candy-crush-saga-500-million-downloads; Victoria Woollaston, “Candy Crush Saga Soars above Angry Birds to Become World’s Most Popular Game,” Daily Mail Online, May 14, 2013, www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2324228/Candy-Crush-Saga-overtakes-Angry-Birds-WORLDS-popular-game.html; Mark Walton, “Humanity Weeps As Candy Crush Saga Comes Preinstalled with Windows 10,” Ars Technica. May 15, 2015, arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/05/humanity-weeps-as-candy-crush-saga-comes-pre-installed-with-windows-10/; Michael Harper, “Candy Crush Particularly Addictive—and Expensive—for Women,” Redorbit, October 21, 2013, www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112980142/candy-crush-addictive-for-women-102113/; Hayden Manders, “Candy Crush Saga Is Virtual Crack to Women,” Refinery29, October 17, 2013, www.refinery29.com/2013/10/55594/candy-crush-addiction.
Michael Barrus and: Michael M. Barrus and Catharine A. Winstanley, “Dopamine D3 Receptors Modulate the Ability of Win-Paired Cues to Increase Risky Choice in a Rat Gambling Task,” Journal of Neuroscience 36, no. 3 (January 2016): 785–94; K. G. Orphanides, “Scientists Built a ‘Rat Casino’ and It Made Rodents Riskier Gamblers,” wired.co.uk, January 21, 2016, www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-01/21/rat-casino-light-sound-gambling-risk; video of Barrus and Winstanley describing their results: ubbpublicaffairs, “UBC ‘Rat Casino’ Providing Insight into Gambling Addiction,” YouTube, January 18, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PxGnk62wGA.
The most powerful: On virtual reality and Oculus: Sophie Curtis, “Oculus VR: The $2bn Virtual Reality Company That Is Revolutionising Gaming,” Telegraph, March 26, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/video-game-news/10723562/Oculus-VR-the-2bn-virtual-reality-company-that-is-revolutionising-gaming.html; Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook announcement about the company’s acquisition of Oculus VR: www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971; Jeff Grubb, “Oculus Founder: Rift VR Headset Is ‘Fancy Wine’; Google Cardboard Is ‘Muddy Water,’” VentureBeat, December 24, 2015, venturebeat.com/2015/12/24/oculus-founder-rift-vr-headset-is-fancy-wine-google-cardboard-is-muddy-water/; Stuart Dredge, “Three Really Real Questions about the Future of Virtual Reality,” Guardian, www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/07/virtual-reality-future-oculus-rift-vr.
In a podcast: The Bill Simmons Podcast, “Ep. 95: Billionaire Investor Chris Sacca,” The Ringer, April 28, 2016, soundcloud.com/the-bill-simmons-podcast/ep-95-billionaire-investor-chris-sacca.
Emily Balcetis and: Emily Balcetis, and David Dunning, “See What You Want to See: Motivational Influences on Visual Perception,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, (2006): 612–25.
In a classic early: Rich Moore (director), The Simpsons, “Homer’s Night Out,” 20th Century Fox Television, Episode 10, March 25, 1990.
CHAPTER 6: PROGRESS
Shigeru Miyamoto knows: Background on Miyamoto an
d Super Mario Bros.: Wikia page for Super Mario Bros.: nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.; Gus Turner, “Playing ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Can Teach You How to Design the Perfect Video Game,” Complex, June 5, 2014, www.complex.com/Pop-Culture/2014/06/Playing-Super-Mario-Bros-Teaches-You-How-To-Design-The-Perfect-Video-Game; video explaining the features that make Super Mario Bros. so compelling: Extra Credits, “Design Club: Super Mario Bros: Level 1-1—How Super Mario Mastered Level Design,” YouTube, June 5, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE; NPR Staff, “Q&A: Shigeru Miyamoto on the Origins of Nintendo’s Famous Characters,” NPR: All Tech Considered, June 19, 2015, www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/06/19/415568892/q-a-shigeru-miyamoto-on-the-origins-of-nintendos-famous-characters.
Shubik described the: Background on Shubik’s Dollar Auction Game: Martin Shubik, “The Dollar Auction Game: A Paradox in Noncooperative Behavior and Escalation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 15, no. 1 (March 1971): 109–11.
You can see the same loss: Scathing Consumer Reports reviews of those sites: www.consumerreports.org/cro/2011/12/with-penny-auctions-you-can-spend-a-bundle-but-still-leave-empty-handed/index.htm.
when Shigeru Miyamoto: Miyamoto quote on his philosophy: Chris Johnston and Gamespot Staff, “Miyamoto Talks Dolphin at Space World,” Gamespot, April 27, 2000, www.gamespot.com/articles/miyamoto-talks-dolphin-at-space-world-and14599/1100-2460819/.
“Predatory games are: Background on Adam Saltsman from an interview; also from Adam Saltsman, “Contrivance and Extortion: In-App Purchases & Microtransactions,” Gamasutra October 18, 2011, www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamSaltsman/20111018/8685/Contrivance_and_Extortion_InApp_Purchases__Microtransactions.php.
This rise was: H. Popkin, “Kim Kardashian and Her In-App Purchases Must Be Stopped!,” Readwrite, July 24, 2014, readwrite.com/2014/07/24/free-mobile-games-in-app-purchases-addiction-predatory/ (page discontinued); Maya Kosoff, “Kim Kardashian’s Mobile Game Won’t Make Nearly As Much Money As Analysts Predicted,” Business Insider, January 13, 2015, www.businessinsider.com/kim-kardashian-hollywood-mobile-game-wont-make-200-million-2015-1; Milo Yiannopoulos, “I Am Powerless to Resist the Kim Kardashian App—So I Had to Uninstall It,” Business Insider, July 25, 2014, www.businessinsider.com/kim-kardashian-app-addicting-2014-7; Tracie Egan Morrissey, “Oh God, I Spent $494.04 Playing the Kim Kardashian Hollywood App,” Jezebel, July 1, 2014, http://jezebel.com/oh-god-i-spent-494-04-playing-the-kim-kardashian-holl-1597154346.
More than twenty years later: Adam Alter, David Berri, Griffin Edwards, and Heather Kappes, “Hardship Inoculation Improves Performance but Dampens Motivation,” unpublished manuscript (2016).
Nick Yee, who: Nick Yee completed a PhD focusing on social sciences and gaming at Stanford; he lists beginner’s luck as one of the major drivers of repeat behavior in games. See: www.nickyee.com/ and www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/attraction.html.
Earlier I mentioned: Simon Parkin, “Don’t Stop: The Game That Conquered Smartphones,” New Yorker, June 7, 2013, www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/dont-stop-the-game-that-conquered-smartphones.
Time called the: Dan Fletcher, “The 50 Worst Inventions—No. 9: FarmVille,” Time, May 27, 2010, content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991768,00.html.
in 2010 she: See more on Young’s center here: netaddiction.com/.
CHAPTER 7: ESCALATION
In the summer of 2014: Timothy D. Wilson and others, “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind,” Science 345, no. 6192 (July 2014): 75–77.
In 1984, Alexey: On Pajitnov and Tetris: Jeffrey Goldsmith, “This Is Your Brain on Tetris,” Wired, May 1, 1994, archive.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/tetris.html; Laurence Dodds, “The Healing Power of Tetris Has Its Dark Side,” Telegraph, July 7, 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/11722064/The-healing-power-of-Tetris-has-its-dark-side.html; Guinness World Records, “First Videogame to Improve Brain Functioning and Efficiency: Tetris,” n.d., www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-video-game-to-improve-brain-functioning-and-efficiency; Richard J. Haier and others, “Regional Glucose Metabolic Changes after Learning a Complex Visuospatial/Motor Task: A Positron Emission Tomographic Study,” Brain Research 570, nos. 1–2 (January 1992): 134–143; Mark Yates, “What Are the Benefits of Tetris?,” BBC, September 3, 2009, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8233850.stm; documentary on Pajitnov and the origins of Tetris: OBZURV, “Tetris! The Story of the Most Popular Video Game,” YouTube, June 3, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yeSnoYHmPc; Robert Stickgold and others, “Replaying the Game: Hypnagogic Images in Normals and Amnesics,” Science 290, no. 5490 (October 2000): 350–53; Emily A. Holmes, Ella L. James, Thomas Coode-Bate, and Catherine Deeprose, “Can Playing the Computer Game ‘Tetris’ Reduce the Build-Up of Flashbacks for Trauma? A Proposal from Cognitive Science.” Plos One 4, January 7, 2009e4153.
In one experiment run: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely, “The ‘IKEA Effect’: When Labor Leads to Love,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, no. 3 (July 2012): 453–60; see also: Dan Ariely, Emir Kamenica, and Dražen Prelec, “Man’s Search for Meaning: The Case of Legos,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 67 (2008): 671–77.
Vygotsky explained that: On Vygotsky and Csikszentmihalyi: L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Fausto Massimini, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Massimo Carli, “The Monitoring of Optimal Experience: A Tool for Psychiatric Rehabilitation,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 175, no. 9 (September 1987): 545–9.
I remember playing a: IGN Staff, “PC Retroview: Myst,” IGN, August 1, 2000, www.ign.com/articles/2000/08/01/pc-retroview-myst.
an Irish game: Information on this section comes from an interview with Bennett Foddy, and from the following references: J. C. Fletcher, “Terry Cavanagh Goes Inside Super Hexagon,” Engadget, September 9, 2012, www.engadget.com/2012/09/21/terry-cavanagh-goes-inside-super-hexagon; video of Terry Cavanagh completing the impossibly quick final level of Super Hexagon at a gaming conference: Fantastic Arcade, “Terry Cavanagh Completes Hyper Hexagonest Mode in Super Hexagon on Stage (78:32),” YouTube, September 21, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ96olZr8DE.
We know this from a paper: In 2015, two marketing professors published a paper about near wins: Monica Wadhwa, and JeeHye Christine Kim, “Can a Near Win Kindle Motivation? The Impact of Nearly Winning on Motivation for Unrelated Rewards,” Psychological Science 26 (2015): 701–8; see also: Gyz Kurucz and Attila Körmendi, “Can We Perceive Near Miss? An Empirical Study,” Journal of Gambling Studies 28, no. 1 (February 2011): 105–11.
Neither one signals: Note that it is legal to change how losses are presented, so a near win is just as legal as a clear loss.
During the 1990s: See: Paco Underhill, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999).
I’ve never used: See, e.g., J. Etkin, “The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification,” Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming).
The same technology: On overworking and karoshi, see: Daniel S. Hamermesh, and Elena Stancanelli, “Long Workweeks and Strange Hours,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review (forthcoming); Christopher K. Hsee, Jiao Zhang, Cindy F. Cai, and Shirley Zhang, “Overearning,” Psychological Science 24 (2013): 852–59; Lauren F. Friedman, “Here’s Why People Work Like Crazy, Even When They Have Everything They Need,” Business Insider, July 10, 2014, www.businessinsider.com/why-people-work-too-much-2014-7; International Labour Organization, “Case Study: Karoshi: Death from Overwork,” International Labour Relations, April 23, 2013, www.ilo.org/safework/info/publications/WCMS_211571/lang—en/index.htm ; China Post News Staff, “Overwork Confirmed to Be Cause of Nanya Engineer’s Death,” China Post, October 15, 2011, www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2011/03/15/294686
/Overwork-confirmed.htm.
In a classic paper: Dražen Prelec and Duncan Simester, “Always Leave Home Without It: A Further Investigation of the Credit-Card Effect on Willingness to Pay, Marketing Letters 12, no. 1 (2001): 5–12; see also: Dražen Prelec and George Loewenstein, “The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt,” Marketing Science 17, no. 1 (1998): 4–28.
CHAPTER 8: CLIFFHANGERS
In their own: Responses to the ending of The Italian Job on the Internet Movie Database: www.imdb.com/title/tt0064505/reviews.
Forty years earlier: Background material on Bluma Zeigarnik and her eponymous effect: A. V. Zeigarnik, “Bluma Zeigarnik: A Memoir,” Gestalt Theory 29, no. 3 (December 8, 2007): 256–68; Bluma Zeigarnik, “On Finished and Unfinished Tasks,” in A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology, W. D. Ellis, ed., (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1938), 300–14; Colleen M. Seifert, and Andrea L. Patalano, “Memory for Incomplete Tasks: A Re-Examination of the Zeigarnik Effect,” in Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991), 114–19.