🍭 Escaping the Trap of Feeling Less and Wanting More
New research suggests we're less satisfied when we're distracted, and this nudges us into "hedonic compensation"
All of us are chasing the things we believe will make us happy, but expectations don’t always match reality. We might save up hundreds of dollars to buy a new gadget that seems like it will make our lives easier, only to realize it’s a disappointment when we finally get it. Or we might save thousands for the vacation of a lifetime, only to spend the entirety of the trip worrying about hotel imperfections or what might be happening back at work.
A lot of this comes down to feeling excited in anticipation of an upcoming treat, but getting our expectations a little too high as a result. During anticipation, we focus on all the positives we’re hoping to get from an event. Taking travel as an example, we might focus on the awesome nature hikes, the great local food, and the swanky hotel we’ve booked. On the other hand, when we’re living the experience, our minds drift toward the negatives in front of us: the mosquitos during the hike, the overpriced dessert at the restaurant, or the single hair we noticed in the shower.
This tendency to have our attention distracted away from what matters about our present experience is a common hurdle to happiness. A new research study has taken aim at this distraction problem and exposed a more specific way in which it can negatively impact our behavior; researchers are calling it hedonic compensation.
🍩 How distraction reduces satisfaction and boosts craving
In a 2024 study, researchers recruited 122 participants and asked them to eat lunch in one of three conditions:
No distraction: just focus on eating
Moderate distraction: eat while watching a video
High distraction: eat while playing Tetris
After eating their lunch for 15-35 minutes, participants completed a survey asking them how much they ate, how much they enjoyed their lunch, how satisfied they felt afterwards, and how much they wanted further gratification following their lunch.
The data showed that the less distracted people were during their lunch, the more they enjoyed it. And the more they enjoyed their lunch, the more satisfied they felt by it after finishing.
Importantly, lower feelings of satisfaction were associated with stronger desires for further gratification. So the knock-on effects of feeling distracted during lunch were that people wanted to eat more after they finished. And in 4 out of 6 iterations of the experiment, this greater desire also translated into reports of increased snacking in the hours following lunch.
In a second experiment, the researchers pinged the phones of 211 participants periodically over the course of 7 days to look for a similar effect in people’s daily lives. On each ping, participants had to complete a survey about their most recent “consumption episode”. These consumption episodes didn’t just relate to eating but could also be smoking, using media/audio for leisure, gambling, gaming, or several other types of consumption activity.
Each survey included questions about levels of enjoyment, satisfaction, and distraction during the consumption episode.
Over the course of the 7 days, almost 11,000 surveys were sent out to participants in total. Consistent with the first study, the data showed that greater distraction during a consumption episode predicted lower enjoyment. And when people enjoyed their consumption less than expected, they also felt less satisfied afterward.
Again, similar to the first experiment, lower satisfaction predicted a greater desire for further gratification. And when people felt an ongoing need for gratification, they were quicker to engage in their next consumption session.
The researchers refer to this effect as “hedonic compensation”. When people are distracted while they consume food or entertainment, they’re less likely to feel as though they’ve had enough of it, which ultimately makes them crave more. That craving then makes people vulnerable to overconsumption.
This concept of distraction during consumption is probably familiar to most people. We often work while we eat lunch, or look at our phone while watching TV, or listen to a podcast during a relaxation break in the park. We can explain these things away as “efficient multitasking”, but the secondary tasks pull our attention away from our primary task.
By reducing how much we focus on what we’re consuming, we also reduce how much we enjoy it, and we then try to compensate by seeking more.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
#1. When consuming, focus on consuming
Multitasking is incredibly tempting but there are costs to it. Splitting your attention across multiple tasks means you’re not fully immersed in any of them. When you pay full attention to a food or activity as you enjoy it, you process it more fully and enjoy it more, ultimately feeling more satiated by it. This reduces the risk of overconsumption, which can be a real problem when it comes to activities like smartphone use and food consumption.
#2. How do different foods make you feel?
A little introspection goes a long way when it comes to understanding which types of food are helping you feel nourished and which types are dragging you down. If you’re anything like me, you love a good cheeseburger, but you continuously forget that it makes you feel nauseous and lethargic after eating. Distraction makes you more likely to forget or misunderstand the connections between your diet and your well-being. You don’t need to remove all the treats in your life; you just need to feel aware of the effects of your habits so you can make informed rather than impulsive decisions about what to eat.
#3. Reflect on your overconsumption habits
When activities feel good, it can be difficult to disengage from them. For example, short-form video on TikTok and Instagram can keep you swiping up for hours without you even noticing how much time has passed. If this kind of habitual overconsumption is familiar to you, being more conscious about what you’re choosing to do and why can help break the cycle. Often, addictive online entertainment serves as a distraction from other more rewarding life activities. Reflecting on whether you’re launching an app impulsively out of habit or whether you’re launching it because you actively want a few minutes of fun can make all the difference between healthy consumption and overconsumption.
“Since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”
~ E. F. Schumacher