A want that was made

Picture a person walking past a bakery. They were not hungry. The smell reaches them, and now they want bread. Nothing inside them changed in that second. A cue arrived from outside, and a want arrived with it.

A want can start inside: hunger after a long morning, thirst after running. Or it can be put there by a cue: a smell, a red badge on an app, a photo of a friend's new shoes. Both feel the same from the inside. The difference is where they came from. Call the second kind a made want.

A person is reading when their phone shows a red badge with a 3 on it. They want to open it. Where did that want come from?

• From the cue. A second ago it was not there; the badge arrived and the want arrived with it.
• From nowhere. Wants just happen.
• From inside. People naturally want to know what their friends said.

Some cues are tuned. Howard Moskowitz, a market researcher, measured for food companies how much sugar, salt or fat makes people like a product most. He called that level the bliss point. Below it, more sugar makes people like it more; above it, less. A snack at the bliss point is a cue in itself.

A feed is tuned the same way. Which posts keep people looking is measured, and more of those are shown. The bakery smell was an accident of baking. A snack at the bliss point and a feed are not accidents. Both are cues tuned by measuring what people reach for.

Each card is a want. Was it there before any cue, or did it arrive with one?

One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.

There is a second test, and it is time. Take the cue away and a made want fades over days, because nothing is feeding it. A want from inside does the opposite: take food away and hunger grows. So a stretch without a thing shows which kind of want it was.

Picture a person whose app is off the phone, so the badge never comes. Move the days and watch two wants: wanting to open the app, and wanting to hear from friends. Made up to show the shape.

Move the control.

A shop sends a text every afternoon: treat yourself, 20% off today only. A customer notices that the wanting arrives with the text, and fades when a week passes with no texts. Using this lesson, what kind of want is it?

• Impossible to say. Wants cannot be told apart.
• A want from inside, because the customer really does enjoy the shop.
• A made want: it arrives with the cue and fades without it.