That Neuroscience Guy - Season 6 Finale - The Neuroscience of Game Theory

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Game theory is a popular mode of thinking, especially in economics, that describes how systems in our environment use game-like rules and directions to recommend certain choices and predict if we'll make them. Whether its businesses offering sales at certain times or even offering platinum memberships to high-paying customers, our environment is designed to access the game-playing parts of our brains. In the season 6 finale of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss how game theory can be used to trick your brain into making certain decisions. 

Hi, my name is Ola Kregolson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. In my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. So, as we move through life, we're motivated by a lot of different things. There's things that sort of push us to do, you know, buy certain things or act in a certain way. And what's interesting, and you've probably never thought of it this way, is you're actually playing a game with life. And these things that motivate us to do things are what we would call game dynamics. There's principles of game design and game theory that control and sort of motivate us, like I've said, to do things. Now, I'm going to give a lot of credit to a guy named Seth Pribach. He did a TED Talk quite a

while ago now, and I encourage you to look at it. You're going to see the parallel because I'm using his content, but what I want to do is dive into the neuroscience of what he talks about. Because if you listen to the TED Talk, what you'll hear is that Seth basically suggests that with these game dynamics, you can get anyone to do anything. And it's true. There's no doubt about it. When I first heard it, I was going, wow, this kid's smart. He's figured something out.

Now, let's just dive into it. So on today's podcast, the neuroscience of game dynamics. And trust me, you might think I don't play video games, and it's definitely not about that. It's about why you do the things you do in life and how you can be motivated to do them. All right. The first game dynamic that I'll discuss is called the appointment dynamic. The appointment dynamic is really, really simple. If you show up at a certain time and a certain place, you'll get rewarded. All right. It's that simple. The example that Seth uses in the TED Talk is happy hour. Happy hour is a great example of the appointment dynamic.

If you show up between 2 and 3 o'clock or 2 and 5 o'clock, you get a discount on chicken wings or something like this. So that's the dynamic itself. And this works in a lot of ways. You know, when I teach classes, sometimes I reward students for being on time. You know, there's lots of places where the appointment dynamic can be applied. You can apply it to situations in your own life. But why does it work?

Well, from a neuroscience perspective, it's very, very interesting. So let's say you're thinking about the happy hour example. You hear that if you, you if you show up at a certain place in a certain time, you're going to get a discount. And the way our brain works is our brain is greedy. Our brain is processing this and saying, all right, well, hey, hot wings are kind of expensive, but half price hot wings are a good deal. So even though you might not normally go to the restaurant at that time where the appointment dynamic is in play, your brain is pushing you towards it because it's seeing a discount in value.

And your brain tracks this, right? Our brains, for the most part, are pretty good at keeping an eye on value. Now, of course, we all break that all the time. If we go back to the very first episode of the podcast and impulse shopping, we know that people sometimes don't assess value quite the way we want to. But in terms of the appointment dynamic, it's like a red flag in front of our brain. If we just show up at this place at this certain time, we're going to pay less for something. And our brain's reward system is

sensitive to that. All right. It's extremely, extremely sensitive to that. So that's dynamic number one, the appointment dynamic. The second dynamic, a lot of people buy into, and I'm a victim to this myself, and it's called status and leveling. And basically the way status and leveling works is the game is set up, and by games, please remember I mean life. The game is set up so that you perceive that somehow you're doing better than someone else. Now, I will give you an example that relates to me. I travel quite a bit for work. This semester has been hectic, which is why our podcast timing hasn't been so great. But if you fly with Air Canada, they have these different status levels. There's 35K, there's 50K, there's 75K, and there's 100K. And as you move up these

levels, you get fancier and fancier cards, right? Starbucks does this, right? Starbucks has different colored cards. You know, oh, you're a more important Starbucks member because you got the fancier card. Credit card companies are all over this, right? They know that if they put out the super black platinum card, people are just going to go, oh, I must have that, right? It's the best thing out there. So that's what the dynamic is, status, basically. And the idea is that you have these markers of different levels of status. Well, again, from a neuroscience perspective, why do we fall victim to this? Why do we want the fanciest credit card possible?

Well, guess what? It's really, really, really simple. Just as we're trying to conserve money, our brains are a little bit egotistical. You know, we are self-centered. I talked about this concept the other day of ownership. We are motivated by things that make us, you know, perceived to be better in the world. And we've talked a bit about ego throughout the podcast and other concepts, but there's some truth to this. And it goes down to like basic principles and where it all started in the sense that from a evolutionary perspective, there's an advantage to being standing out and being at the top of the herd, right? And that's sort of what drives us at

a deep down level. But in terms of the brain itself, you know, there's a neurotransmitter release when these things happen. When you first get that black super platinum card, your brain's reward system is triggered, all right? And then there's this social perception, your view of yourself in the world, and your brain's emotional system responds to that. So this is another driving motivator, this idea of status, because it's how we see ourselves in the world. And if we have these better things, we want them. Now, the good news is there are people out there that don't fall victim to these things. I, you know, I have to raise my hands and say, yeah, I'm, I'm guilty every year with Air Canada. I'm

chasing the next higher status level. You know, when I got the thing in the mail about, hey, we got this fancier new credit card, you know, I was, luckily I said no to that one, but some people say no to that. And to be honest, the way you say no to that is pretty straightforward, which is you just have to realize that your own self-esteem is independent of these things. But I'll leave that for the clinical neuropsychologist to deal with. The third dynamic that Seth talks about is progression. We want to see progress, all right? We want to complete things. And the example he uses is one that's plagued me for years, which I like, which is when you sign up for LinkedIn, if you use LinkedIn, there's basically this percentage indicator of how

complete your profile is. Now, you can start LinkedIn with a profile that's barely complete. All right. But they, they, they know that if they, they want you to have more information, because that means more people view you, which means the site is working better.

Like that's the underlying reasoning, but that little percentage bar, that progress bar, right. That motivates us and wants us to complete things. All right. So it's a motivating factor and everyone uses this. Any fundraising campaign uses progress bars, right? You know, Hey, we're almost there just a little bit further. Um, we actually use this in fitness

apps, the progression dynamic, right? Where, Hey, your, your workouts almost done. I've gotten into Peloton recently and sharing way too much about my life, but with Peloton, this is, you know, hey, your workout's almost done. I've gotten into Peloton recently, sharing way too much about my life. But with Peloton, I'm just looking at the progress bar in terms of where I am on the ride, and the closer it gets to the end, the happier I am. Now, progression, why does progression work? Well, again, this ties into our concept of self, and I haven't talked about it for a while,

but we have this view of ourselves in the world that the left prefrontal cortex is trying to maintain. And part of our view is typically we want to know that we're completing things. You know, we have this sort of natural tendency to do this. It's taught to us at an early age. And it goes back to this concept of ego as well. So within the brain, your brain has this strong desire to complete these things. It doesn't want to leave things unfinished. So your prefrontal

cortex is telling you, hey, let's keep going and let's do this. But it's just this strong inner desire that we have within the brain to see progress. The last game dynamic that Seth discusses, it's called communal discovery. I will point out quickly that if you Google this and there's books that show you like there's a hundred game dynamics, you know, who knows what the actual number is. And people that are really into say game design would be, you know, probably dive into this more, but I'm just going to parallel the Ted talk, which was my inspiration. Communal discovery is just this idea that we like working together to do things. And if you work together to do things, it's way more efficient than if you work on your own. All right. And this is why we form groups, right? The idea of group formation is, is, is that it will, it will be more

effective, but it's also rewarding. People like working together. People like being a part of the team. And again, I've talked about this concept throughout the podcast, but this is true. We are social creatures, you know, from a very early evolutionary stage with being hardwired to want to participate in groups. And our reward system, again,

and our emotional system responds when we're in groups. Now, there is a small subset of people that respond the opposite way or are agnostic to this. But most people, again, our brain is hardwired to want to work in groups. And this, like I said, this goes back to evolutionary days that ties to survival, it ties to fight and flight. And we're just hardwired to want to do this so there are four game dynamics the appointment dynamic status dynamic progression dynamic and communal discovery again this is completely inspired by seth prebatch uh i'd check out the ted talk you'll see that i

basically paroled it i was just trying to add in the neuroscience bit because he doesn't really talk about that at all because when i first heard heard this TED Talk, I actually changed the way I teach to use these game dynamics in the classroom. Okay, that's all for this podcast. That's us for 2023. We're going to take our Christmas break now. It has been a bit inconsistent this semester. A lot of travel on my part, so Matt's not to blame. This was all on me, but we're still trying to get the episodes out as best we can. Probably the biggest

request I have is thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com or at thatneurosciguy on X, which formerly Twitter, at thatneurosciguy on threads. We would really like to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. When we plan the podcast, we basically just sit down and go, okay, well, here are some things we could talk about. And if you look back across the years, we've been running, we've covered a massive range of topics, but we, there's things we don't know because we don't think about them, things you might be curious about. So please take a couple minutes, if nothing else, and just email us an idea, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com or at thatneuroscienceguy if you follow me on X or threads. So please do that because we're going

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