Consider how often you check your phone for messages or notifications. Whatever number you come up with, you’ll probably be way off the mark because half the time, we do it almost on autopilot.

Back in 2014 it was highlighted that we were checking our phones over 1,500 times per week — more than once every five minutes during waking hours. More recently, a survey in the US showed this was now 352 times per day — about once every three minutes.

It’s not just the checking however, we are also at the beck and call of these devices.

We respond almost instantly. A UK study found people took an average of just 104 seconds to react to a notification, with 70% responding within six seconds. Our mobiles aren’t just remote controls for life — they’ve become the remote control of our lives.

What’s happening here is a subtle rewiring of our brains. Evolution trained us to react to movement in the corner of our eye — the “orienting response” that kept us alive. Today, that survival mechanism is hijacked by pings, flashes, and vibrations. Each notification triggers a reflex; each reflex reinforces the behaviour.

There is more to this phenomenon however and this is where that cold May in Minnesota comes in.

Skinner’s research showed that voluntary behaviours are shaped by their consequences, and repeated when followed by positive reinforcement. The key is in how those reinforcements are scheduled.

Skinner identified three main reinforcement schedules, namely: -

• Continuous — Every action is rewarded. Think base points for every purchase.

• Interval — Rewards appear based on time, either fixed (e.g. a monthly bonus) or variable (e.g. a surprise coupon sometime this week).

• Ratio — Rewards tied to actions, either fixed (a coffee stamp card) or variable (slot machines, where payout odds are constant but timing unpredictable).

It’s these reinforcement schedules that are key to understanding why we’re so quick to react and respond to that app notification — and why some loyalty programs work, and others do not. If our aim is to shape behaviour, then schedules matters.

What Skinner noted was predictable reward schedules — whether continuous or at set intervals — quickly lose power, meaning behaviours become “extinct” quickly when the motivator is removed. You’re essentially just ‘buying’ this behaviour and it stays for as long as the reward keeps giving. By contrast, variable reinforcement schedules — where both the timing and the value can’t be predicted — create the strongest, most persistent behaviours. They take longer to build, but once established, they stay for longer.

This is one of the reasons why some loyalty programmes tend to decline over time.

If all the programme does is issue points in response to spend, then over time it will become inconsequential to the member. The behaviour may continue, but the ability to change or lift it dulls; customers operate on auto-pilot.

This was something I’d seen previously on other coalition programmes whereby bonus points offers just didn’t change behaviour — the member had essentially already tuned out.

Variable reinforcement is different, and it’s why people keep pulling slot machine handles or refreshing their inbox.

As Michael Harris wrote in The End of Absence: “Animals, including humans, become obsessed with reward systems that only occasionally and randomly give up the goods. We continue the conditioned behaviour for longer when the reward is taken away because surely the sugar lump is coming up next time.”

Variable interval reinforcement schedules then are the critical factor in repeatable, ongoing behaviour.

If you’ve ever wondered why your kids (or you) are so drawn to video games — now you know, it’s the reinforcement schedules at work. Players grind through repetitive tasks not because they’re fun, but because the next reward might be just one more level away. Games layer schedules — continuous XP points, timed quests, random loot — to keep players hooked. Psychologists call this a compound schedule, where overlapping reinforcement types combine for maximum effect — creating “a persistent pattern of responding to a stimulus [..] that is resistant to behavioural extinction.”

Your mobile phone behaviour is no different.

Behavioural psychologists describe the impact of receiving a new message as a “reinforcer, or reward for checking. You might check [..] at 9:00 a.m. and have 5 new messages, at 11:00 a.m. and have none, and then at 3:00 p.m. you have 7. As long as you periodically continue to receive messages, your checking behaviour will continue”.

This is the variable interval reinforcement schedule in practice, and the randomness or unpredictability of the notifications is what builds the behavioural reinforcement.

It’s also what connects a WhatsApp message to gambling –they leverage the exact same psychology.

Your mobile usage is sticky — in part — because of the unpredictability of notifications, and the same is true for slot machines. They don’t need to pay out often — just unpredictably. Co-Author of the book Mind Hacks and lecturer at the University of Sheffield, Dr Tom Stafford discusses how these two seemingly different activities basically rely on the same underlying psychology, saying:-

“Both slot machines and email follow [..] a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’ which has been established as the way to train in the strongest habits. This means that rather than reward an action every time it is performed, you reward it sometimes, but not in a predictable way. So, with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there’s something wonderful — an invite out, or maybe some juicy gossip — and I get a reward.”

Checking email or messages is a relatively mundane action. Sure, you’ll occasionally get “something wonderful”, but most of the time, that’s not the case. And this brings an interesting dynamic to the fore — when it comes to operant conditioning, it can help mask the mundane.

In a study entitled “Understanding and Assisting Excessive Players of Video Games”, the authors observed that reinforcement schedules — especially compound ones — kept players playing for longer and carrying out behaviours that were repetitive or boring, simply to chase the reward. They noted that “variable-ratio reinforcement schedules [..] often produced what was termed ‘grinding’ behaviour. Grinding refers to the repetition of an action or series of actions in a video game in order to obtain a reward.”

So, the power of the right mix of reinforcement schedules can mask the more mundane actions required to achieve it.

One thing that crops up quite a lot when talking about loyalty programme design is the pushback that our market is somehow different. Whether that market is High Net Worth credit card customers, buyers of luxury goods, customers of a certain age, or residents of a given county. It’s always the same message which is “I get it, but our customers wouldn’t respond to that”.

In a more general sense, people consider themselves unique and with their own individual decision-making processes. Nobody likes to think they can be influenced in some way unconsciously — so that pushback is likely less about their customers and more about themselves. But the reality is that people tend to respond consistently to the same kinds of environment — because our brains are all wired in the same way.

Keeping with the video game theme, research has shown that usage is driven more by the design of the game mechanics — the reinforcement schedules — than the individual gamers characteristics. A research paper entitled “The role of Structural Characteristics in Problem Video Game Playing” pointed this out saying: -

“In particular, ‘structural characteristics’, defined as those features that facilitate the acquisition, development, and maintenance of playing behaviour irrespective of the individual’s psychological, physiological or socioeconomic status, have been shown to play an important role in explaining the appeal of gambling activities.”

The point of all this is to say that behaviour is less about the individual than the environment.

Design the mechanics right and almost everyone responds in the same way. Get the schedules right and you can make even mundane actions — like swiping a loyalty card or opening an app — feel worth repeating.

So, back to the question at hand — If we can understand what makes someone use and continue to use a loyalty program — like they do a video game or their mobile phone — we can design a programme that works harder and rewards more.

Which brings us back to the story of yuu.