Rob: Ok, why do you think that's happening?
M.S.: Really good question, I think it's just part of technological evolution that there's the positive in terms of what I refer to again in distal relationships. People live very far apart now and also people are very busy so when is the last time that you literally went and knocked on your neighbors door and said, 'Hey, you want to come over for a cup of tea or do you want to come over for a beer?' How many of us even know our neighbors enough to knock on the door and say hey. Outings require planning, majority of us are very fatigued after our work days. Again I think this is part of the hyper arousal.
Rob: The other thing you mentioned earlier in your book is the difference in timing. You talk about how people have different expectations about reactions used to be you would send a letter, a week later you get a response. Now you send an email, you expect a response instantly. Talk about timing.
M.S.: Yes. The instant expectation of responses again that's keeping us all on call. Now, part of that is also the nature of the beast. This is where I kind of connect it to gambling and addiction, unfortunately. The anticipatory cycles we're actually getting aroused on this by opening our mail and seeing what we have from whom, if it will be this, if it will be that. And these of course are very reinforcement schedules that we see in gambling since the beginning.
Rob: You talked about the unwrapping the gift high.
M.S.: Yes, that is my analogy that it's not the high of receiving and of satisfaction that we're getting something, it's is it this, is it that? The excitation that we have before we know recently has a lot higher than the satisfaction we have for the gift actually is what we wanted.
Rob: Let's talk a little bit more about that.
M.S.: Well the example that I used in the book is multiple gift giving holidays or ceremonies and it's of children, the behaviors of children. There's that anticipatory state which I think is natural for example before a birthday. You'll just be really excited about what they will and won't and that's we're dealing with, and then when you get only one gift, the cycle makes sense. It's finite but what I refer to as times of affluence or multiple gifts, the child will open one gift and squeal with delight and immediately move onto the next. They will not spend time with that toy or that item and they'll hop to the next, rip it open and hop to the next and rip it open. It's the anticipatory high that they're getting; it's not the receipt high, it's not the actual gift that they're responding to. It's the anticipation. I know I'm fumbling here in terms of how I'm expressing it. Do you think that's coming across?
Rob: Well no, I think that you need to talk a little bit more about what you mean by anticipatory high and what's involved in that.
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