Nir Eyal

Now, you've read the book already, so you already know the results.

And people guess there's going to be some kind of surprising outcome.

There certainly is.

When I ask people, how much longer did the rat persist?

What was the effect of this conditioning?

And by the way, what changed here?

Nothing changed in the experiment.

Nothing changed in the rat's body.

Something with the conditioning had changed.

What changed?

Now that they knew that salvation was possible, that they might be saved, how would their performance be affected?

Well, some people guess twice as long.

Some people guess three times as long.

If somebody's really optimistic, they might say four times longer.

The rat went from 15 minutes to an hour of swimming.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

That would be unprecedented.

If you could persist in your business four times longer, if you could spend four times longer making those sales calls or doing that difficult task, wouldn't that be amazing if you could turn on a switch and persist four times longer?

But the rats didn't persist four times longer, not even close.

They didn't swim for 30 minutes, twice as long, or four times as long at 60 minutes.