Dopamine makes you addicted to seeking information
Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox?
These are all examples of your dopamine system at work.
Wanting vs. liking — According to Kent Berridge, these two systems, the “wanting” (dopamine) and the “liking” (opoid) are complementary.
The wanting system propels us to action and the liking system makes us feel satisfied and therefore pause our seeking. If our seeking isn’t turned off at least for a little while, then we start to run in an endless loop.
It is possible for the dopamine system to keep saying “more more more”, seeking even when we have found the information. During that Google exploration we know that we have the answer to the question we originally asked, and yet we find ourselves looking for more information and more and more.
