Wanting isn’t the same as liking

You can want something without enjoying it. Most of us do it dozens of times a day — and the science behind it is one of the most important ideas about dopamine.

Sound familiar?

• Opening Instagram

  …without particularly enjoying it once you’re there.

• Checking email

  …when you know nothing new is likely to be there.

• Opening the fridge

  …when you aren’t actually hungry.

• Reaching for your phone

  …automatically, before you’ve decided to.

• Wanting another episode

  …even though you’re tired and stopped enjoying it two episodes ago.

Try it on yourself

What is going on?

Researchers call the “wanting” part incentive salience: the brain tags certain cues — an app icon, the fridge door, the autoplay countdown — as worth going after. Dopamine is closely tied to that tagging and to how much effort we will spend chasing a reward. Liking, the pleasure itself, is handled largely by separate systems.

Most of the time the two travel together: you want lunch, and you enjoy it. But they can come apart. A cue that has been paired with reward many times can keep triggering the pull long after the reward itself has become dull. That is why you can find yourself on an app you are not enjoying, without remembering deciding to open it.

Show me the neuroscience

The wanting–liking distinction comes from decades of research into how the brain processes reward. We have graded it on two pages, with every study linked:

• Is dopamine the pleasure chemical? — verdict: false, evidence grade A
• What does dopamine actually do? — prediction error and effort
• Why do habits become compulsive?

Next: Better or worse than expected? Try the prediction-error model