When I studied Communication And Multimedia Design, I've had a couple of classes that involved design and psychology. We touched upon several subjects and priciples such as those made by Cialdini, BJ Fogg, Nir Eyal and Tristan Harris.
In this post I'd like to write something about the Mind Hijacks, as explained by Tristan Harris.
TL;DR
Here are some psychology principles often used in tech:
1: If you control the menu, you control the choices
People rarely ask what is not on the menu. This means companies can influence you by only adding items to menu's that are profitable to them.
2: Put a slot machine in a billion pockets
Gambling is addictive. By simply owning a phone you basically carry around a slot machine with you. You get a notification! what will it be? I've got to look now!
3: Fear Of Missing Something Important (FOMSI)
Basicially Fear Of Missing Out. Imagine all the very important things you'll miss when you're not on social media for a day!
4: Social approval
As human beings we want to belong. When you post a photo of yourself, you hope for approval in the shape of likes.
5: Social reciprocity
Another natural human thing we do is reciprocate. When someone gives us something, we want to give something back. When someone follows you on Instagram, you feel the need to follow back.
6: Bottomless bowls, infinite feeds, and autoplay
By giving users endless content, it makes it harder for them to stop consuming content. You can scroll endlessly on Instagram and twitter, and Youtube autoplay videos for you by default.
7: Instant interruption vs. "respectful" delivery
Messages that interrupt the user are more likely to get people to respond. You're most likely to reply to a message send through Whatsapp compared to an email.
8: Bundling your reasons with their reasons
When you want to respond to a message on Instagram, you are first confronted with the feed, which might tempt you to scroll through it. Your reason is to send a message, theirs to keep you in the app for as long as possible.
9: Inconvenient choices
Companies like to make it easy for you to do something they want you to do, and hard for you to do something they don't want you to do.
10: Forecasting errors, "Foot in the door" strategies
By abusing commitment and not telling the user how much time something will take, companies come up with clever ways to keep you interacting with their product.
Tristan Harris?
Who's Tristan Harris? Well, according to his website, Tristan is the Co-Founder of the Center for Humane Technlogy(A nonprofit organization involved with the alignment of technology with humanity's best interest).
Tristan has done research into the influences of technology on human attitude, behaviours and beliefs and has been featured in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma which touches similar subjects.
The Mind Hijacks
In an article on Medium, Tristan writes about ten different hijacks that are used within technology to influence users. This article had a pretty big impact on how I, as a designer and developer, and even as a regular user, look at technology. I've found myself recognising these hijacks and basically doing the pointing meme at it every time I do.
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So, here's a summary of these hijacks.
Hijack 1: If you control the menu, you control the choices
Let me give you a scenario:
You're at a restaurant and are given a menu from which you can choose. What the restaurant doesn't tell you is that they also have several dishes that aren't on the menu.
You don't ask about that though, why would you? We're so used to assuming that whatever is on the menu, is all they have to offer.
The tech industry is aware of that as well and use that to their advantage. And example Tristan uses in the article is Yelp. Yelp offers a set of choices when it comes to bars and such. The user tends to assume this is all the choices available and trusts the system to offer them truthfully. It is entirely possible though, that the menu has been adjust to, for example, put specific places higher on the list than others.
Another example are notifications on your phone. Personally, Instagram, X (Twitter) and Snapchat tend to send me notifications throughout the day. These could be notifications such as "someone liked your post" or "You've received a message" but also stuff like recommended posts by people I don't even follow. For some reason, I often get "BREAKING NEWS!!!" notifications of random posts on X which, if I didn't know any better, could influence me to perceive the world differently.
Somewhat related, if you're interested in why apps like X and Instagram send you seemingly random messages, you may want to read about the "Hooked model". Or continue reading as the following Hijack touches upon this as well.
Hijack 2: Put a slot machine in a billion pockets.
Let me tell you something interesting about Reinforcement.
For example, a rat can be trained to push a lever to receive food whenever there's a certain stimuli such as lights of sound. Basically, the rat is rewarded for doing a specific thing when something prompts them to. Due to this reward, the rat will most likely remember and keep up with that behaviour.
Within the psychological term of reinforcement there are generally two variants of it. There's positive and negative reinforcement. When the reinforcement leads to behaviour such as wanting or liking something, it's known as positive reinforcement. When, instead you're trying to take away an undesirable stimulus, it's known as negative reinforcement. For example, taking medicine when you're in pain.
What Tristan talks about in the article, is intermittent variable rewards. What this means is teaching the user to do something that rewards them, but not always. By not always rewarding the user(making it variable), it becomes more addictive for them.
Why not always reward the user?
Well, by only rewarding the user occasionally at an unpredicable schedule, the user will be in a state of constant anticipation and engagement. This makes the user feel like the next reward could always be around the corner. Besides, occasional rewards trigger a dopamine response in the users brain more often compared to predictable, scheduled rewards.
Sound familiar? Yeah, it's basically how gambling works. Keep on pushing coins into the slot machine, you could win a jackpot!)
The tech industry is very aware of this and applies it everywhere. When you open your phone, you're basically playing a slot machine to find out if you've gotten any notifications. Same goes for refreshing our email and the timelines on social media. These implementations of intermittent variable rewards could be either intentional or unintentional, really depends on the situation.
Hijack 3: Fear Of Missing Something Important (FOMSI)
This is basically FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Imagine there being a chance that you're missing out on something. I'm pretty sure most people can agree with me when I say that sucks. It's a pretty human thing you not want to miss out on things. We're social beings after all.
As Tristan says, if something convinces you it offers you important information, it's hard for you to turn that off. This is why we tend to stay subscribed to newsletters and keep following people online that we haven't had any contact with in ages. It's why we keep opening social media and refreshing our feeds. "What if I miss something important like this one famous person breaking up with another famous person?".
Hijack 4: Social Approval
It's in the human nature to want to belong, feel approved and appreciated.
positive appraisal and acceptance of someone or something (a behavior, trait, attribute, or the like) by a social group. Its manifestations may include compliments, praise, statements of approbation, and so on.
An example is when we post something on Instagram, we want it to be approved by our social circles. The more likes, the more approval!
Hijack 5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat)
Generally, we humans have a strong sense of reciprocity. When someone does something for us, we want to do something for them in return. We want to be even. An example: On Instagram (it's always Instagram.. isn't it...), when someone follows you, you tend to feel the need to follow them back.
In the article, Tristan shows us how LinkedIn abuses this as well, they send you messages saying someone wants to connect, they make you feel like that person made a conscious choice to do so, so you accept the connection. Shortly after you'll find that LinkedIn also offers a list of people you may know. May as well send connection requests, right?
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Hijack 6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite feeds and Autoplay
Have you ever been on Tiktok? Or Youtube Shorts or Instagram Reels? Have you ever found yourself consumed in those videos? Scrolling and scrolling, entranced, only to eventually look up and realise it's been hours? Well, that's exactly the kind of behaviour these apps want from you. It's precisely what they've been designed for.
These apps keep on feeding you content without an end. they make sure there's always somewhere for you to go, so you wont do anything else but stay inside their app.
Examples are:
Infinite videos on Tiktok, Shorts, Reels and so on
Infinite scroll on social media posts such as Instagram and X.
Autoplay to the next video on Youtube, Netflix and other video services
Even I apply this in a way by giving you the option to read the previous/next blogpost at the end of a page.
For big tech companies, the more time you spend on their service, the more money they receive.
Hijack 7: Instant interruption vs. "Respectful" delivery
Let's say you have a (digital) mail box and a chat app such as Whatsapp. Which one do you tend to open more often? The mail box which asynchronously lets you know you've received mail, or Whatsapp which lets you know theres a new message immediately?
Companies know that by interrupting the user with notifications, they are more easily persuaded into opening their service. This goes hand in hand with the positive reinforcement of the sound/buzz of the all familiar notification sound. Most people tend to open their phone right away as soon as they hear it.
Hijack 8: Bundling your reasons with their reasons
A good example Tristan gives about this hijack is grocery stores. Those stores know what items are most popular, and put them in the back of the store. This way you have to walk through the whole store and will probably be tempted to buy other items as well.
So, The stores are combining their reasons (Sell you more products) with your reasons (Buy the products you need).
Same goes with Social Media. If you want to post something on Instagram, you'll first have to go to the home page, and be tempted by all the new posts on your feed.
And even when you do want to simply look at your feed, it's littered with ads. Again, bundling your reasons with their reasons.
Hijack 9: Inconvenient choices
Businesses naturally want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices you don't want you to make harder,
Let me give you an example, I'm subscribed to mails from Megekko and want to unsubscribe.
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You'll have to look hard to find the right button. In this case its in the tiny text at the bottom, in the same color as the rest with a slight underline to it. No obvious button to make it easier to find, because that would make it easier for you to unsubscribe.
And when you click the link, you're confronted with several checkboxes and multiple lines of text to read.\)
Luckily, Megekko doesn't make it any more difficult to unsubscribe aside from this. But I've had several experiences where it's been made way more difficult than needed.
Hijack 10: Forecasting errors, "Foot in the door" strategies
Users find it hard to forecast what the consequences of a click are. Companies can abuse this by not letting users know, for example, how long something will take. Would you start something when you know it will take a lot of time to complete? Probably not. Related to this is the Cialdini Principle of Commitment.
Conclusion
In the end, I find these hijacks to be very interesting. In general the psychology behind technology and design is such a big topic and can have great influence on how well your product will do.
I think its good to keep these hijacks in mind, as a user as well as a designer and developer. Be aware of when these hijacks are being used, and think about wether or not you want to use them in your own products.