Nir Eyal explains the role of variable (uncertain) rewards as a core habit-forming tactic across products and experiences. He uses examples — slot machines, spectator sports, books/movies, and news — to show that uncertainty about outcomes (who wins, how a story ends, what’s new) drives engagement and repeated attention.
Chapters
So this variable reward, this is in all sorts of habit forming products, online, offline, you see it everywhere. Best example, slot machines, right? Why do people love gambling? Well, there's games of chance, right? There's uncertainty around what you might win. When you think about spectator sports, if you take a step back, if an alien came to Earth and watched us, you know, watching a ball bounce around a pitch or a field and it's. And everybody's chasing this ball and trying to get it into a small little hoop or a net or whatever, it's kind of ridiculous, right? But why do we love it so much? Because there's uncertainty, there's variability around who's going to win the match. If you think about books and movies, what makes them enjoyable? Well, it's the ending, right? What's going to happen? That's what we want to know for the news, right? How many of us are news junkies? Why? Because the first three letters of news, N, E, W is what's new. Nobody wants yesterday's news, they want what's new today. It's uncertainty, it's variable. And so we are all looking for variable reinforcement.
