Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

by Nir Eyal

Of those who accepted the deposit challenge, an astounding 52 percent succeeded in meeting their goal! One would imagine that a greater reward ought to lead to greater motivation to succeed, so why would winning the $800 reward be less effective than winning the $650 reward, plus $150 deposit? Perhaps participants in the deposit group were more motivated to quit smoking in the first place? To combat this potential bias, the study’s authors only used data from smokers willing to be in either test group. Explaining the results, one of the study’s authors wrote that “people are typically more motivated to avoid losses than to seek gains.” Losing hurts more than winning feels good. This irrational tendency, known as “loss aversion,” is a cornerstone of behavioral economics.