Why we do find certain things satisfying?

　
[Bubble Wrap, Organized Desk, Perfect Circle]
And why do we find certain things unsatisfying?

Let’s take a look a disorder in the Brain’s satisfaction circuit. People with Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder constantly struggle with getting things to feel correct or finished. Nicholas Cage’s OCD
character in the movie Matchstick Men clearly has a neat house, but some small carpet fuzz out
of place sends him into a cleaning frenzy. But how does he know when he’s finished? Some
people might be satisfied with at least having all the dishes washed, but clearly his standards
are higher. One of the things with ​OCD patients​ is they have “task stopping” criteria that don’t
make much sense to other people. What’s the stopping criteria for shutting a door? Well if it’s
closed, stop shutting it. For this person, the stopping criteria is three shuts. Handwashing is a
common compulsion in OCD and most will wash over and over again until it​ ​feels right​.​ ​Then
again, how do we know when we’ve ​completely​ washed our hands? Wouldn’t it be nice to have
a concrete cue?

Take a moment with me to try out this psychological test. Watch this puzzle closely. Depending
on how perceptive you are, you will know what the puzzle is before it’s completed. We’ll finish
this later.

Getting back to OCD, there’s an old idea called the Zeigarnik effect that says people are far
more likely to remember unfinished tasks than completed tasks probably because it bugs the
hell out of them.[​R​]

Based on tons of brain scan data, ​Jeffrey Shchwartz​ has found that there are three parts of the
brain involved in OCD. One of them identifies when something is not how it should be[​R​] -
something is wrong, something is out of place, something is incomplete. This then sends a
signal to another part of the brain that gives you this vague uneasy uncomfortable feeling.

Then, another part of your brain called the caudate nucleus responds once you have done
something that ​sufficiently ​solves the issue. And in OCD patients, this part of the brain is much
smaller which indicates that this part of the brain hardly gets activated.[​R​]
There’s a condition called “hypothalamic obesity” where people’s brains do not get the
“satisfied” signal and they eat and eat, chasing that feeling of satisfaction.[​S​] One part of OCD
seems to be that the person doesn’t get the signal from their brain that they have sufficiently
washed their hands, cleaned their room or whatever it might be, so they keep going and going
chasing satisfaction and hoping to get rid of that feeling of unease that this part of the brain is
generating.

OK so completion of tasks is a component in that feeling of “satisfying.”

Maybe that’s not so shocking as the literary definition of “satisfy” is basically “to ​complete
something.” Let me clarify that yes, completing tasks appears to ​actually feel good, to actually
be rewarding to the brain​ as evidenced by this study looking at the brain activation in people
completing a maze task.[​R​] So why should completing things feel good?

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp says in his book ​Affective Neuroscience​ ​that “… pleasure
indicates something is biologically useful.” He has a nice diagram outlining how your brain
monitors the status of your body then generates feelings like I’m thirsty, I’m cold, I’m thirsty, or
I’m hungry. Then you seek a way to resolve these issues and resolving the issues feels good.

Even though you don’t have free will, you’ve probably heard of opioid receptors - the pleasure
receptors in the brain. These play a role in the pleasure you get from everything from eating
food, to taking a hot bath, to getting a hug.

These feelings of pleasure need to lead to some kind of stop signal otherwise you’d eat until you
puked or you’d make your bath hotter and hotter until it burned. For example the mu-opioid
system, which provides a sense of pleasure has a role in getting us to stop eating.[​R​]

Jaak Panksepp points out that if you give rodents very high doses of opiates, drugs that strongly
stimulate your opioid receptors, it will reduce ​all behaviors​ and eventually the rodents become
completely immobile. This state of maximal satisfaction seems to be as strong a “stop” signal as
you can get.

So maybe for tasks that don’t necessarily help your biology, like say tidying your desk or
finishing your to do list, your brain uses a stop signal similar to the one used biologically
programmed tasks like “eat food” or “prevent yourself from freezing” or “drink water.” That is, in
general, pleasure may act as a piece of “feedback” telling you something was completed and it
was completed correctly.

But let’s look at this as a sliding scale. Yes you can correctly complete the task of hitting a
target, but the most ​correct ​way of hitting the target is hitting it right in the center and this is
…difficult.

JFK

What’s interesting about difficulty is that evaluating a reward, and anticipating the ​difficulty​ of the
task necessary to get that reward are performed by the same parts of the brain.[​R​] Could these
overlapping functions suggest that the brain has a tendency to perceive some things as more
rewarding ​simply because they are difficult?

Friends on playing hard to get​ [​R]​

Neurologist Anjan Chatterjee describes in his book “​The Aesthetic Brain​” how a​ ​2009 study
found that the brains of architecture students responded differently to pictures of buildings than
people without such expertise. First, there was more activity in the hippocampus - the area of
the brain associated with memories. This makes sense, I’m sure architecture students have far
more memories of looking at buildings. What’s interesting is two parts of the brain associated
with ​reward​ were more activated. Suggesting that just by having expertise, these people could
derive more pleasure from looking at the same pictures.

In fact, your ability to enjoy certain things, depends on your understanding of its difficulty.
Obviously the difficult of things like this is immediately apparent.
This doesn’t look particularly interesting, but these guys are very excited because they know it’s
very hard to do what this guy is doing.

Contrary to the idea that rewards and fear of punishment are the most important motivators in
people and animals, Harlow and Meyer found in the 1950’s that monkeys can be very motivated
simply from the pleasure of solving a ​challenging​ task. Here’s a quote from one of their studies:
“two well-fed and well-watered monkeys worked repeatedly at un-assembling a six-device
puzzle for ten continuous hours even though they were quite free of painful stimulation and quite
well fed and well watered.” [​S]​

Maybe otters juggle rocks simply because it’s a challenge.

Here’s an interesting finding from​ ​a paper on Social Anxiety Disorder​- SAD. People with SAD
were more likely than people without the disorder to experience a high level of satisfaction from
successful social interactions. That doesn’t seem to make any sense.

You may have heard of the concept of “Flow,” popularized by the book titled ​Flow​ by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is this incredibly enjoyable, rewarding, or ​satisfying​ state that appears
when someone is undertaking a challenging task - This flow state could appear when you’re
focused long enough on anything from sports to doing math, to video games or writing.
Essentially when the brain is put in a situation where it is continuously challenged close to the
limit of your skill, you enter the flow state and you are in the Zone - a big cascade of
neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, dopamine, anandamide, serotonin, endorphins are
released - these make you feel good ​and​ they are performance enhancing.[​S]​

This paper found that people with Social Anxiety Disorder were more likely to experience this
enjoyable state of flow during successful social interactions probably because social interactions
are a ​challenge​ for these people with SAD.[​R​]

Dr. Gregory Berns, says in his book titled “Satisfaction!” that based on how dopamine works in
the brain, “​satisfaction comes less from the attainment of a goal and more in what you must do
to get there.​”

It takes a lot of training to run a 10K if you’re out of shape. So finally running 10 kilometers when
you couldn’t run more than 2km last month is of course more satisfying than if you ran 10k’s on
a daily basis. Maybe people continue to run ultra marathons because they will always be hard.
OK so when you realize you completed something correctly, that feels good, but how do you
know​ that what you did was correct?

Let’s take a look at satisfying sounds.

Why do we find certain sounds satisfying?

What about this sound? [Tom Cruise] Not too satisfying, yet certain people seem to like that
same noise if it’s coming from a cracked back. These back cracking videos get millions of views
with​ ​louder cracks​ being more satisfying.

Computational Neuroscientist Anil Seth says that your perception of reality is based on your
brain’s best guesses of what’s happening in the world. It has expectations and makes
assumptions based on various stimuli. Here’s an AI simulating what it would be like if the brain
was biased to assume everything must be a dog. You’ve probably seen the​ ​checker shadow
illusion​. Based on the brains understanding of how shadows work it can only assume A is a
darker color than B …but they’re the same color. The point is your brain interprets everything in
context, not in absolutes.

Here’s an auditory illusion called the McGurk effect. Take a good look at this guy. Clearly he’s
saying Ba Ba Ba then Fa Fa Fa. Actually he’s just saying Ba the whole time - the exact same
audio for Ba is repeated. but the second time around the video is replaced with the video of him
saying Fa.

So the point is, the reason these sounds are satisfying is because they are piece of clear
feedback that something was done correctly… and they are interpreted as such because they
are ​combined ​with the context of you seeing something being done correctly.

Either that or this is an example of​ ​Pavlovian conditioning​ as in Pavlov’s dogs. Dogs see food,
become excited. Pavlov rings a bell everytime food is presented. Dogs are now excited by the
bell. Or in this case, you hear this sound every time you hit the dart board, so you enjoy that
sound as feedback that you successfully hit the dartboard.

In any case, the sounds act as a piece of feedback indicating something was completed
correctly, and what’s great about them is they are practically instantaneous. Several
experiments looking at addiction have hooked rodents’ brains up to a​ ​self stimulation device
where they can press a lever and directly stimulate the pleasure center of their brain. Imagine a
mild hit of a drug with every press. Of course the rodents get addicted to this machine, pressing
the lever in favor of food or sleep. However, ​Even a delay of one second​ drastically impairs the
rats ability to become a lever pressing addict.
Clicker training is a method for training dogs or other animals. The problem with traditional
training is you can’t cram a treat in the dogs mouth the instant they put their paw up to shake or
whatever it might be that you want them to do. So with clicker training, you use a device to
make a clicking noise the instant they do the behavior you want ​then​ you follow up with a treat.
Now I’d bet that that clicking noise is satisfying for the dog.

Sure we generally prefer certain sounds over others - why we like music is a very complex topic,
but when it comes to feedback, clearer sounds are generally more satisfying.

Preferring a clear sound might have something to do again with the pleasure receptors - opioid
receptors and them responding to easily identifiable noises. We actually have opioid receptors
in the auditory cortex of the brain.[​R​,​ ​R2​] A study on chinchillas found that you can enhance
their ability to pick up noises by giving them a drug that stimulates opioid receptors.[​R​]

There are even opioid receptors in the ​visual​ areas of the brain.[​R​] And, these opioid receptors
are most dense in the part of the brain that ​interprets t​ he image. Dr. Irving Biederman and
Edward Vessel say “visual stimuli that contain a great deal of ​interpretable​ information should
activate many opioid receptors … and so provide the greatest pleasure.”

What does that mean?

Well let’s get back to our puzzle.

Maybe you’re a little satisfied that I finally completed the puzzle, but it’s probably not very
satisfying if you can’t identify who this guy is. By the way, if you happened to have seen
Princess Mononoke and then happened to pause the video here, you may have enjoyed
recognizing that this is the cover of the puzzle

Here’s another example, what do you think of these? Think for a moment about how interesting
these pictures are to you.

Now what if I told you this is four elephants sniffing an orange

This is a bird catching a very strong worm
This is the Arthur clenched fist meme and,
This is a bee.

Now that you know the significance of these images, they’re probably a little more interesting
than when they were just random doodles. On that note, it’s not a surprise that most brands’
logos are easily recognizable images rather than intricate and beautiful paintings. Also
notification noises on your phone are noises like this and not noise like this. So the brain seems
to prefer what it can recognize or interpret or understand. I’m sure you’re familiar with the
satisfying “Aha!” moment when you finally solve a puzzle and successfully interpret it
completely.
My point with all this is that we are constantly scanning for the significance of things and we also
scan for the significance of our behaviors and seek out feedback that helps us interpret the
impact of our actions.

Of course video game designers understand all this very well.

For example this old game River City Robertson from 1989 lets you know if someone blocks
your attack or if your hit landed successfully. Then there’s a noise for when you’ve completely
beaten an enemy out of existence.

The much more recent shooting game Carlton’s Duty has a very complex sound environment
but the same concept, you have noises acting as feedback that you successfully hit someone
and there’s a noise letting you know you’ve completely eliminated someone to death.

The Super Smash Bradley series has various noises for when you miss an attack, for when a
weak attack lands, a strong attack lands, and a much bigger noise when you defeat someone.

This is a very common and basic concept in video games, but a lot of effort is put into each
sound effect with plenty of attention paid to specifics like the attack, decay, sustain and release
of each sound to make it the most appropriate form of feedback to let you know the results of
each of your actions. Video games capitalize on all kinds of strategies to enhance the
satisfaction you get from ​completing​ goals, they give you ​feedback​ when you do things ​correctly
and they usually give you distinct feedback for when you pull off more ​difficult​ maneuvers.

Okay so we like it when we Complete things, particularly difficult things, and we find feedback
satisfying and we derive pleasure from recognizing things. It’s fun to break a simple concept like
satisfaction down, but can we actually make use of this information in our daily lives? Well,
that’s what I’ll be talking about next time, so make sure and subscribe and click on the bell so
you’ll know when the video is out. Also what about “oddly satisfying” videos - is there a
satisfying explanation for why we like such random things like cutting soap? Well, that’s next on
the list.

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