Scratch em cards
Our story today is on Google Pay. It is my go to app for making payments online. Its almost as if the app has me hooked. The lure is too hard to resist and so I wanted to find out why. Why is the damn thing so addictive?
And it hit me. Scratch cards
Most payment companies offer a fixed cashback on every transaction. Its their way of hooking users to the platform. You know what to expect walking into the deal. And so every time you are rewarded for completing a routine transaction you feel elated and you are likely to go back to the platform once again, even if the rewards keep diminishing. However, Google pay doesnt do that. It offers scratch cards if you were to complete a sizeable transaction on the platform. Unlike a fixed cashback offer, a scratch card is much like a lottery ticket. In most cases, its a dud i.e. the scratch card doesnt pay out. You dont get anything. However, in the off chance that you hit the jackpot, you get a massive payout. In my case, I once got Rs. 800 for a transaction worth Rs. 100, I made on Zomato. I was jumping for joy that day. I told everyone in the family about my lucky break. I thought that I had the Midas touch until reality set in.
If you know anything about lotteries, you know that the house always wins. No sane company will keep offering you big payouts if they want to stay in business for long. I won the jackpot, yes. But i began to realise that the probability of me winning BIG once again is now negligible. In fact, since then Ive won a total of Rs. 20 and Ive probably used Google Pay more than a 100 times already.
So why do I keep going back? Why is my monkey brain preferring a lottery ticket over PayTMs offer of an assured cashback? Well Variable rewards.
Every time we receive a reward (a cashback, so to speak) our brain releases a good dose of the happy hormone??dopamine. In small moderate doses, it helps regulate our wellbeing. In large doses it can contribute to addiction. Long story short, our brains crave dopamine. So apps that help trigger the neurotransmitter get all our attention.
Back in the 1950s, BF Skinner a famed psychologist ran an experiment where he offered lab rats food pellets if they pressed a lever. Lever A would bring down pellets of the same size every time. Lever B would offer pelltes of different sizes i.e. sometimes youd get a smaller pellet, sometimes a larger one and sometimes none at all. And the rats kept going crazy for the randomized lever. They wanted to gamble as well. This experiment provided the scientific basis for using??Variable Rewards to condition human behaviour.
Its simple really. Our brain releases more dopamine in the anticipation of rewards than the reward itself. When the rewards are fixed and we know what to anticipate, our dopamine levels stay in check. But when the rewards are variable, our brain relentlessly seeks the thrill of unlocking large payouts-in turn hooking us to the damn thing.
Its the same reason why gambling is so popular. Its the same reason why FIFA (that famous football game) uses surprise player packs instead of letting users buy individual players for a fixed fee. And its also partly the reason why I keep going back to Google Pay in search of that elusive jackpot. Its an addiction. I cant stop myself. Also, ever since I won that Rs. 800 ive been going on and on about how Google Pay is absolutely the best. Nobodys ever given me a cashback of 800. And almost nobody has credited it directly to my bank account.
So Google, heres to your wonderful app Google Pay
Congratulations. You got me. You got me good ☺
P.S. This isnt a promotional post and Google hasnt paid us anything to write this one. Just in case youre wondering.
This article was originally published on Finshots