Interview with Adam Alter: "Addiction, Technology, and Autonomy"

Dr. Adam Alter is an Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, with an affiliated appointment in the NYU Psychology Department.

His research and writing focus on behavioral addiction, specifically as it relates to technology, as well as cognitive disfluency and its implications for decision making.

“Everything around you is shaping you in some way…You may have autonomy, but it’s going to be confined to a really small sliver of the day.”

Jump to a question:

• Who are you and where do you work?

• How does behavioral addiction differ from substance addiction?

• How does behavioral addiction differ from rewarding behavior? At what point does it become pathological?

• Do you subscribe to the Buddhist view that most of what we do stems from craving? Could mindfulness be an antidote?

• How does Kent Berridge’s distinction between wanting and liking factor into your work?

• Should technology designers optimize for wanting or liking?

• What about behaviors that seem productive, like exercise or work?

• How do you distinguish between meaningful experiences, like flow, and addictive ones?

• What does autonomy mean in the context of behavioral addictions and unconscious environmental influences?

• Should the fact that voters are “hackable” change how think of politics?

• How does the design imperative to reduce friction impact our behavior?

• We use our screens for many things. Is all screen time equally bad?

• Are there dangers to making things as fluent and easy to use as possible?

• You’ve argued that systems are better than goals. But can’t we also become addicted to our systems?

• Does automating a task cause us to lose general cognitive skills, or only the specific skill we automate?

• What concrete suggestions would you give people trying to improve their relationship with technology?