100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People

76. People are Programmed to Enjoy Surprises

In Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? I talk about the role of the “old brain” in scanning the environment for anything that could be dangerous. This also means that the unconscious, old brain is looking for anything new or novel.

Craving the Unexpected

Research by Gregory Berns (2001) shows that the human brain not only looks for the unexpected, it actually craves the unexpected.

Berns used a computer-controlled device to squirt either water or fruit juice into people’s mouths while their brains were being scanned by an fMRI device. Sometimes the participants could predict when they were going to get a squirt, but other times it was unpredictable. The researchers thought that they would see ...