Hooked
The Hook Model has four steps:
- Trigger: External or internal, this is the thing that starts the process and causes you to act out of habit rather than conscious thought.
- Action: This is the action you take involuntarily in response to the trigger e.g biting your nails due to stress, checking twitter due to loneliness etc.
- Variable Reward: This is the promised rush of dopamine that caused the subconscious to start the process in the first place. Anticipation of a reward, even if you don’t know exactly what it will be is how compulsion loops get started (can be crafted)
- Investment: As I currently understand it this is the sunk cost fallacy. When you have already donated enough time or money or social presence or any other number of things that you consider valuable that you have given to the loop that causes you to come back because “I invested time and money in this before and I’m not an idiot so it must have been worth it.” the thought is not a conscious one of course but this is how we justify compulsion loops to ourselves.
And so the pattern repeats.
We feel bored so we open a mobile game (wanting that dopamine rush)
We play the game and crave more of the positive feeling its rewards give us
We receive the rewards on different schedules but as those schedules begin to slow and the dopamine wears off we need our fix and so we pay the app to speed up the process again.
We’ve paid money so now to quit the game would make it a waste of time and money. We keep playing and paying.