Temptation

Have you ever wondered why we can't resist buying things or checking our phones all the time? It's not just because we enjoy it - that's only part of the reason.

Have you ever felt you can't resist doing something, even knowing you shouldn't? Well, scientists have been studying our brains to figure out why we feel tempted to do things that we know we shouldn't. They've found that temptation is more than just wanting a reward - it's a complex process happening in our brains. Cool, right?

Back in 2011, a cool dude named Chella, who teaches computer stuff at Missouri University, got to spy on how college kids were using the Internet. He watched them surf the web on campus and tried to figure out their habits. By looking at their patterns, he could tell what they were up to online and even guess a little about who they were.

In an article for the New York Times, Chella said that the way you use the Internet can show a lot about your mental health. He found that students who showed signs of being depressed used the Internet in a different way than others. By looking at how they used the Internet, he could tell which students might have mental health problems in the future.

Chella found that people who use the Internet a lot, especially sending tons of emails, are more likely to be feeling down. This means that spending too much time online might not be good for your mental health.

Chella made a cool new tech thing to help find students who need help in school. But then he found out something weird - why do people who feel sad check their email a lot?

Soothing discomfort

Have you ever wondered why we choose to use certain products and services every day? Well, psychologists think that people who are feeling down or anxious might use the internet more often to try and feel better. In a study by Chella, it was found that students who were feeling depressed were more likely to spend time online to boost their mood. This suggests that our emotions can play a big role in the things we do and use in our daily lives.

Everyone wants to feel better when they're feeling down, not just really sad people. Our brains are wired to help us figure out how to feel better when we're feeling bad. Just like how we might take medicine to help with a headache, we also turn to things that make us feel better when we're feeling sad. It's interesting to know that taking medicine for a headache can also help with emotional pain. So, taking something like Tylenol can help with both physical and emotional pain. It's pretty cool how our bodies work like that!

When we want something badly, our brain can make us feel pain to motivate us to go get it. This is because our brain is wired to make us seek out things that make us feel good. So, when we see something we want, our brain releases chemicals that make us feel good but also stressed out at the same time. It's like our brain is saying, "Go get it now!"

Imagine a study from 2005 where scientists showed women pictures of chocolate and watched how their bodies reacted. They found that the women had a kind of automatic response, like when you see a scary animal in the wild. Even though these women loved chocolate, they also felt anxious and out of control when they thought about eating it. So, for these women, wanting chocolate was actually kind of stressful for their brains.

For a long time now, scientists have been studying how our brains make us do things by giving us rewards. They've found out that our brains have a special system that makes us feel good or bad about things. When we think something good is going to happen, our brain makes us want it, which can make us feel stressed. The best way to make that stress go away is to get what we want.

Magnified anxieties

Companies are good at making us want things. When they advertise a product or service, they focus on all the good things about it to make us want to buy it. This is kind of like how animals trick each other by showing off their best features. It's called "super-normal stimuli" and it's all about creating a strong desire for something. So next time you see a commercial or an ad, remember that they're trying to tempt you into wanting what they're selling.

Have you ever felt like you just have to have something because everyone else does? That feeling of wanting what others have is an instinct we all have. A scientist named Waal did an experiment to show how this works, and it's pretty interesting!

During the experiment, Waal gave two capuchin monkeys a piece of cucumber as a treat when they handed a rock to the researcher. Both monkeys got cucumber as a reward, so they did what they were supposed to do.

When the researcher gave one monkey a yummy grape and the other monkey just a boring cucumber, things got crazy! The monkey who got the cucumber was totally fine at first, but then he started freaking out. He was screaming, showing his teeth, and banging on the table in anger. This feeling of missing out on something good is called FOMO, and marketers use it to make people feel like they're missing out if they don't buy something. It's like how the monkey felt when he saw the other monkey with the grape.

Marketers have a tough job trying to get people to buy more of their company's stuff. They have to figure out what makes customers want to buy things in the first place. By finding out what bothers people and then offering a solution, they can make us want to buy their products. Without our natural desire to have things, companies wouldn't make any money. So, marketers have to make us feel like we need their stuff, even if we didn't know we wanted it before.

Just like how the college students in Chella's research showed signs of feeling down, we all try to avoid feeling sad. We tend to rely on things that make us feel better right away, like certain products and services.