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Adam Alter

Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern · 1 appearance on the record.

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academicauthorscientist@adamleealter ↗LinkedIn ↗adamalterauthor.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Adam Alter is a behavioral scientist and Professor of Marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of multiple bestselling books examining decision-making and the impact of technology on human behavior.

10statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.8/5average certainty → 2.1/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 1 opinion · 7 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Adam argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Alter: Inactive smartphones on tables diminish conversation quality between strangers
“There's this amazing study showing that if you sit across from someone else, and there's a smartphone on the table, even if it's inert, it's not actually being used. The conversation that you have with that person, if that person is a stranger, will be diminis…”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:43 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality

Everything Adam Alter said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alter: Familiar experiences are less addictive due to rapid tolerance
“Things that are familiar to you actually are less likely to be addictive. You develop a tolerance really fast.”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:14 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Modern digital media eradicates traditional stopping rules
“One of the big trends I think in, in media today is the eradication of stopping rules. So you think about the way we consume media in the whole of the twenties century, everything had a natural endpoint, or at least the suggestion of an endpoint. Books have ch…”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:23 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Assertion Supported
Alter: Inactive smartphones on tables diminish conversation quality between strangers
“There's this amazing study showing that if you sit across from someone else, and there's a smartphone on the table, even if it's inert, it's not actually being used. The conversation that you have with that person, if that person is a stranger, will be diminis…”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:43 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Continued engagement, not initial interest, makes media a hit
“What makes something a hit or what makes something popular or successful is continued engagement. It's not that initial engagement. It's the fact that you don't stop being interested.”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:12 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Stopping videos before cliffhangers prevents binge-watching
“You want to basically short-circuit these attempts to eradicate stopping cues. You stop watching five minutes before the end of the episode, before the cliffhanger arrives, and then every time you watch from the last five minutes of one episode to the last fiv…”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:19 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Attention span functions like a muscle requiring exercise
“The attention span is a lot like a muscle that you have to exercise to improve.”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:14 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Creativity comes from moments of boredom
“Creativity comes from moments of boredom.”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:33 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Obsessive engagement with technology fulfills unmet psychological needs
“This tendency to engage obsessively over and over again with a certain experience Is designed to treat some psychological need that isn't being met another way.”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:27 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Insight
Alter: Defending against addictive design is a historically unprecedented challenge
“The only reason we're having this discussion was because there are people out there today who are so good at designing products who have such great teams of behavioral experts they've put together. That we need to discuss how to react against those products, h…”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 25:13 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality
Opinion
Alter: Most popular consumer products are fundamentally harmless
“I think most popular products are basically Fairly innocuous.”
Adam Alter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:01 a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Addiction vs Popularity in the Age of Virality Jan 2, 2019 6m
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