Some people love surprises. Others hate surprises. Clearly we have a distinction between types of people… Wrong!

We have a distinction between types of surprises.

A surprise is a deviation from what was expected. When reality deviates from our expectations our dopamine system trains us.

If the deviation from expectation resulted in something better than expected, we get a shot of dopamine and we feel good. People love surprises that make reality better than expected. It’s not personal, it’s biological.

And when reality unexpectedly deviates from expectation in the other direction. When you expect that your flight will get you to the important meeting on time, and then the airline is unexpectedly grounded… in that case your dopamine system shuts down for a brief period to teach you that this is a situation to be avoided. A bad surprise. People hate bad surprises. It’s biological.

This is all called reward prediction error.

Don’t be fooled by the word error. Error usually implies a bad thing. But in this context it just means an unexpected deviation from expectations.

And so, as people who want to engineer great experiences for our customers and colleagues, we can leverage reward prediction errors.

We can design an unexpected deviation that’s better than what was expected, the generous act of giving people a bonus dopamine hit that creates a great experience.

And we can remember that the coin has two sides; if we don’t pay attention to the experiences we create, the people we aim to serve might find themselves in a situation where an experience in our sphere of influence falls short of what they expected, and we’ll tank their dopamine, they’ll feel terrible, and we’ll lose the game.

It’s not personal, it’s just biology.