{"id":220534,"date":"2023-01-17T08:12:09","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T08:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/?p=220534"},"modified":"2023-02-13T07:26:28","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T07:26:28","slug":"how-often-do-you-go-novelty-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/how-often-do-you-go-novelty-hunting\/","title":{"rendered":"How often do you go \u201cnovelty hunting\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Takeaway: <\/b>\u201cNovelty hunting\u201d is my name for when we go searching for dopamine, usually in the digital world. Three factors determine the amount of dopamine this hunt releases: novelty, direct effect, and genetics. Finding novelty used to take more effort and therefore meant we had to be more creative. But the digital world has introduced a new \u201cera of novelty,\u201d meaning stimulation is pretty much everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

Estimated Reading Time:<\/b> 2 minutes, 26s.<\/div><\/div>\n

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There\u2019s a term I use to describe a common activity many of us do without even realizing: novelty hunting. Novelty hunting is when we seek ways to stimulate our mind, especially in the digital world. <\/span><\/p>\n

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This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve written previously about our brain\u2019s \u201cnovelty bias<\/a>,\u201d where we\u2019re rewarded with a hit of dopamine each time we pay attention to anything novel. (Dopamine is a neurochemical that makes us feel as though pleasure is right around the corner but doesn\u2019t lead to pleasure itself.) <\/span><\/p>\n

As I explore in How to Calm Your Mind<\/i><\/a> (page 108, for those following at home), three factors of an experience determine the size of a dopamine hit:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Novelty<\/b>: How surprising an experience is;<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Direct effect<\/b>: The extent to which an experience directly affects our life (this is sometimes called \u201csalience\u201d);<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Genetics<\/b>: Some of us are predisposed to release more or less dopamine from experiences.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Novelty hunting most often takes place online and on our devices, versus in the analog world. With endless refreshing and scrolling, there is always more of the above factors to trigger a dopamine release. Take, for example:<\/span><\/p>\n