Simple Physiological Reward-Seeking | Brand, Business & The Biological System

“All organisms feel pleasure and pain from simple chemical processes in their bodies which respond predictably to the outside world. Reward-seeking is an effective survival-promoting technique on average. However, those same pleasure receptors can be co-opted to cause destructive behavior, as with drug abuse.” Shane Parish, Farnam Street

As human organisms the allure of short term pleasure in the form of deeply rooted reward signals in our brains is a extremely effective strategy for accruing a large base of customers or users.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all examples of this. It is well known by now that Facebook was cognizant of getting new users to “7 friends in 10 days”, as it was a foundational insight into the psychological reward that users were seeking, by extension, the simple rewards of likes and hearts keep users coming back.

Similarly, brands that sell physical goods are acutely aware of these short term chemical reward processes that drive us to unconsciously desire and purchase. Is a Ferrari really worth the price? or does it tap into our deeply rooted chemical reward system for seeking sexual status?

Meet The Chemicals

In order to better understand how this works, it is important to know which chemicals are responisble for feeling of rewards.

Most of the pathways that connect structures within the reward system are glutamatergicinterneurons, GABAergic medium spiny neurons, and dopaminergic projection neurons. More simply, make people feel that they are getting closer to their fundametal desires of survival, replication and thier derivatives like status, and attractivness.

For brand, I think the question is simply how do I get my customers to a fundamental reward as quickly and easily as possible, at every touch point?