The Atlantic published an excerpt from my essay for Distance today. It’s a little over 1500 words, and covers some of the main points in the essay.
It also includes a fantastic photoshopped stock photo of a lab rat playing FarmVille in a Skinner box.
Here’s a small snip:
In the 1890s, while studying natural sciences at the University of Saint Petersburg, a Russian mathematician named Ivan Pavlov was analyzing dogs’ saliva output over time. Pavlov noticed that dogs tended to salivate more before eating and that merely the sight of a white lab coat would induce salivation — even if no food was on the way. So he tried ringing a bell before presenting them with food, and found that over time, the dogs would salivate even if a bell was rung with no food presented. Pavlov’s research defined classical conditioning, in which a primary reinforcer (one which naturally elicits a response, e.g. food or pain) is associated with a conditioned or secondary reinforcer, such as the lab coat or bell.
Forty years later, Burrhus Frederic Skinner built upon Pavlov’s observations as a young psychologist in graduate school. He constructed a soundproof, lightproof chamber that housed a small animal; a lever was placed within the animal’s reach, which triggered a primary reinforcer. Called the Skinner box, the device opened up many possibilities for experimentation, leading to breakthroughs in later research: from the relative addictiveness of cocaine in isolation versus in a larger community, to the question of whether rats have empathy.
I’m really, really excited about the impending release after Feb. 17, especially given the awesome essays that Vitorio Miliano and Jon Whipple are working on alongside me.
Anyone curious about social game design, behavioral psychology, or even just why FarmVille is so damn addictive should take a look at the full excerpt.
Really inspiring work.
I hope the buzz of ‘gamification’ wears off and we return to saying ‘Skinnerian’. It’s so much less rosy that way.
This abyss (dopamine mine?) is well charted by slot machine manufacturers who have found what lies at the bottom: “customer extinction.” As explained in this lecture by Natasha Schull, “the stated goal of [slot machines] is “customer extinction” - the moment at which the customer is out of money:”
Sounds like a cool scene.
