The scene
A feed learns that you paused. It offers more of the pause. You did not decide to become this person. You clicked, and the system treated the click as a confession.
Named evidence
Zajonc (1968) showed that mere exposure can increase liking without a reflective choice. Wood and Rünger (2016) describe how repetition in context builds habit, which identity may later narrate as “who I am.” Causal claims about long-run identity change under recommender systems should stay humble; the engineering evidence for engagement optimisation is stronger than the developmental evidence.
The design question is not “can we predict the next click?” It is “what preferences are we allowed to manufacture — and how would a reader notice?”
Evidence & provenance3 sources · production record
Source record
Sources stay inspectable so the boundary between reporting and interpretation remains visible.
- 01Zajonc RB (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure — Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph
- 02Wood W, Rünger D (2016). Psychology of habit — Annual Review of Psychology
- 03PSYTECH News editorial constitution — PSYTECH — House method: scene → claim → named evidence → implication. Editorial, not clinical.
Production
Editorial production
Human review
Not recorded for this release