Clickbait: Still Tasty After All Those Years
August 8, 2019
This will come as no surprise to many who consider the rise of smartphones a scourge on society. Haas Newsroom, a publication of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, explains “How Information Is Like Snacks, Money, and Drugs—to Your Brain.” Writer Laura Counts reports on a study performed at Haas which found that, as with eating tasty food or receiving money, taking in information can produce a dopamine surge. So, clickbait junkies are real junkies, addicted to junk information instead of drugs, money, or junk food. Counts writes:
“‘To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it’s useful,’ says Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, a neuroeconomist whose research employs functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), psychological theory, economic modeling, and machine learning. ‘And just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful—what some may call idle curiosity.’ The paper, ‘Common neural code for reward and information value,’ was published this month by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Authored by Hsu and graduate student Kenji Kobayashi, now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, it demonstrates that the brain converts information into the same common scale as it does for money. It also lays the groundwork for unraveling the neuroscience behind how we consume information—and perhaps even digital addiction. ‘We were able to demonstrate for the first time the existence of a common neural code for information and money, which opens the door to a number of exciting questions about how people consume, and sometimes over-consume, information,’ Hsu says.”
See the write-up for the study’s methodology. Though researchers did not specifically examine the brain’s response to consuming information online, their results do indicate information prompts the reward response. That is why we find ourselves seeking out details that are not really helpful in any way. Except, of course, to get a shot of that sweet, sweet dopamine.
Hsu draws a parallel to junk food. Sugar was a rare treat for our distant ancestors, and the desire for sweetness drove them to eat healthy fruit whenever they could. Now, though, refined sugar is all around us and usually divorced from fruity nutrients. Similarly, we live in a time when unhelpful (and downright untrue) information pervades our environment. As with watching our diet, we must be careful which information we choose to consume.
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2019
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