What You Have in Common With a Pigeon and Why It’s Causing Problems for You

Today nearly everyone in America has become just as silly. People are “exactly like the pigeons,” says Peter Balsam, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. Because, he says, we carry around a device that elicits this bizarre behavior: our phones. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Tap, tap, tap.

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Neuroscientists have found that the brain chemical dopamine draws us to these signals. Dopamine was once believed to encode pleasure, but a vast amount of evidence accumulated over recent decades suggests that’s not quite right. Instead, it plays several roles. It triggers motivation for and wanting of fundamental needs. It makes you want the cake in front of you, says the neuroscientist Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan. But it doesn’t make you like the cake or feel satisfied afterward. Dopamine isn’t about gratification. Wanting and liking are, in a way, separable components in the brain, he adds.

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