That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Amazon Addiction

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

In today's epsiode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind online shopping addiction, using Amazon has a case study. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kergolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. So during COVID, something interesting happened to me. And I'm talking about the early stages, because I guess technically we're still experiencing some form of COVID. But I'm talking the very early days. I started buying things on Amazon. I'd never shopped on Amazon before. It just wasn't my thing, right? I would always go to the store, right? I would go see what I wanted to buy, you know, whether it was groceries or clothing or technology, I wanted to go and actually see it and play with it. But of course, COVID took that away from us, right? Like it was a lot harder to do that.

So a lot of us went online. Now, some people were addicted to Amazon before that or using Amazon before that. But, you know, for a lot of us, COVID sort of forced it upon us and we embraced this Amazon addiction, this ability to just buy things so easily and have them delivered to our doorstep. So on today's podcast, I want to talk to you about Amazon addiction. And I'll put a disclaimer up here. I'm pretty bad at this. My son makes fun of me all the time because there's rarely a day that I come home and there isn't an Amazon parcel waiting for me. So I have to admit, I am guilty of this as well. And I suspect some of you are. So let's dive into the neuroscience behind it. Okay. So why are we addicted to Amazon or, you know,

replace Amazon with whatever online shopping resource you use? Well, first of all, it's easy. You know, you can sit on your laptop on your couch or wherever you do it. You can do it from your phone and it's easy. It's just so easy to click on something and go, I think I like that. And you click one button, you know, with Amazon, they've got that buy with one click thing. So it's just boom and it's done. Now, why does that matter from a neuroscience perspective? Well, we're actually hardwired to keep track of energy expenditure. Our brains don't want to use energy unless we have to. And this goes back to like midbrain, you know, fight or flight responses, these very natural instincts we have in our brains when we're making decisions,

they take into account energy expenditure. You know, in terms of us as a whole, how much does it cost me to do this? Now, we're not talking about the financial cost. You know, that's obviously a part of it as well. But we're actually talking about the cost in terms of energy expenditure. So think about it. If you're on your couch and you've got your phone out and you're browsing something on Amazon, the amount of energy that you actually have to expend to get this item is quite small, right? It's minuscule. It's tapping it with your finger. But to get up and get dressed,

possibly have a shower, get in the car, drive to the closest store, whether it's groceries or the mall, it costs a lot of energy. And our brains are biased against expending that energy unless we really need to. This is why it's in some sense so easy to be a couch potato, is our brains will actually say, well, you know, that is energy you're going to expend, so maybe you're better off to not expend the energy and just stay where you are. Well, this is why Amazon appeals to us. From an energy expenditure perspective, our brains are hardwired to take the easiest path as long as it makes sense. Now, there's other reasons why we're addicted to Amazon, and this goes back to our very first episode on impulse shopping, but it's our good old friend,

System 1. If you recall with decision making, we have system one, which is our sort of gut hunch decision. And we have system two, which is our analytical decision-making system. And when we buy something on Amazon, a lot of the time, it's a gut hunch thing. We see something we like and we just get it. And with that one click button, boom, it's done. Our gut hunch is fulfilled. You know, I'm bad at this. And the one I don't mind sharing my weaknesses,

CNN has this section where it's like the 20 best tech things in the last month or, you know, 20 awesome gifts for Father's Day or whatever it is. And I like to look at that because I want to know what's new and exciting. But what do they do in those articles? They embed the Amazon link. So you read about this thing and you think, wow, it's cool. And you click on it. And the next thing you know, you bought the thing. And that's system one. Now, how do we protect ourselves from system one? Well, take time. If you think back to when we started a couple years ago, this is the lesson that our parents taught us. Just take a deep

breath and count to 10. And this is true of Amazon purchases. There's research that actually shows that if you walk away, right, and take a bit of time, you are less likely to buy that item on Amazon. Now, of course, the internet is rigged against us. You've probably seen this by now, but as soon as you start looking at items online, what do the sidebars come up with or the other ad sections? Well, they're tracking you. So they keep putting this item in your face and that's to help make you make that gut hunch decision to buy it. And of course, if you think of system one versus system two decisions, these gut hunches, we know that emotion biases these things, right? We've talked about the amygdala, wouldn't be an episode without it.

So let's just stick with the word emotion. But we know that when we're making these gut hunch decisions, the amygdala is there, right? And it's going to bias you to go, oh, wow, that jacket's really nice. Boom, bought. And your emotional system is typically going to bias you towards making those rapid gut hunch decisions. And that's why you make them. But much like, you know, relying on system two and taking a bit of time, and we've talked about this before, but remember your emotional system. If you count to 30, you walk away for a minute. Typically, these emotional spikes you get from the amygdala and other brain regions, they shoot up very

quickly, but then they come back down fairly quickly. So if you can walk away, right, if you can just give yourself a bit of space, guess what? The emotional bias might be gone and you might look at that item on Amazon and go, you know, I don't really need it or it's not as nice as I thought it was. Now, that's just two reasons, but there's actually two more. Now, again, we've talked about this one on our second episode and subsequent episodes, but it applies here, which is instant gratification. You know, buying that item and hitting boom, and Amazon tells you very quickly,

like you get a text message or an email within seconds saying, hey, you've got this thing. Well, guess what? That releases the midbrain dopamine system. And we've talked about dopamine a lot, but for a quick review, basically those little phasic, now these are phasic releases of dopamine. They're short little spikes of dopamine. This is what causes that addiction. It's a reward. You go, oh man, that felt great to get that thing, right? And you know what that does? Well, we've talked about it in the past, but that's our reinforcement learning system. So those little spikes of

dopamine reinforce purchasing these things. So guess what? Every time you buy something on Amazon, you get that little hit of dopamine, and that actually reinforces you wanting to do it again. So guess what? You go back to Amazon and you buy something again and again and again. And to be fair, Amazon's reinforcing this, right? Don't kid yourself. That's why they text you every day and they send you all these updates because they want to reinforce you doing that again. And guess what? Every time they do send that little message, your item is getting ready to ship,

your item is shipped, your item is out for delivery, those lead to those little dopamine spikes that make you want to do it again. Now, the last reason that we have Amazon addiction is a concept called temporal discounting. And I'll give you a good example of temporal discounting. Again, this is something I've mentioned before,

but the classic example of temporal discounting is buy now and pay later. Now, here's the research on this. They do all these studies and they show how this really works. And you're actually wired this way in your brain and we'll get to that. But you can do research in the lab

where you say things like, well, do you want $20 today? Like right now we'll give you $20 or we'll give you $40 in three months. And what they do is they vary the time and the amounts to figure out what your threshold is. But you get the idea. If we are operating purely from a system two perspective, you should always choose $40 in three months because guess what? It's more money and you're going to get it at some point. Now, of course, you could make an argument that if you were starving or broke, you should take the money right now, but let's assume that's not the case. You should always wait. And this is the you know, this is the buy now, pay later thing that I've told you about. And what's happening is your brain actually discounts

the value of these objects because you're paying later. So even though it's still $100 for the thing you bought, your brain actually treats it like it's worth less because you don't have to pay for quite a while. On Amazon, you're not using cash right away, right? Sometimes if you walk into a store, you're thinking about your bank account and going, wow, I'm going to lose that money right now. But with Amazon, it creates that bit of distance, right? Your credit card bill might not be for a couple of weeks. So you have temporal discounting contributing to this. You buy now, you pay later, and your brain thinks you're spending less money. And that's actually how you're wired. So why are we addicted to Amazon? Four things.

One, it's easy. Our brain's an energy expenditure. We're actually hardwired to minimize the amount of energy we expend. Two, system one, gut hunch decisions and emotion. You're wired to make these rapid decisions, especially if you like something. How do you protect yourself there? Take time, think about it, let system two kick in. Instant gratification, those little dopamine hits, they're going to reward you for making these choices.

So you've got to be wary of that and say, well, hang on. Yeah, it feels good, but it's still going to cost me money or do I even need this thing? And last but not least, the concept of temporal discounting. All right, because you're paying in the future, all right, you think it's worth less. And I'll give you a trick for that one. A friend of mine who's also a neuroscientist said, here's a way you can fight temporal discounting. When you buy something on Amazon or any of this buy now, pay later stuff, pay it right away. Go straight to your online banking and transfer the money right away. And guess what? That takes away temporal discounting. You're very quickly going to go,

well, heck, I just spent that money and look at my bank account. So pay off your credit card as soon as you spend the money and that will help fight off this concept of temporal discounting. Anyway, hopefully you found that interesting. That's a little bit into Amazon addiction. Of course, don't forget the website,

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