Instant Gratification

It is not surprising to me to see that people are becoming more impatient as the world turns to instantaneous service. People love convenience. Our inventions and technology have shown this over the years, as a desire for convenience led to things like microwaves,  personal computers and cellphones. I also think our brains are naturally looking for shortcuts, though. There are studies showing how our brains look for shortcuts to save time and energy. Our semantic networks probably help us find these shortcuts, using stimuli in the world to trigger quick responses from what we have stored in our brain. From what we learned earlier in class, salience and priming help us make quick decisions to save time and energy. Advertisers know how much we love fast food and convenience, so when companies like Jimmy John's flood our brain with priming techniques that say "we are the fastest!", we are more likely to choose Jimmy John's to eat because it is 1) the first thing that pops into our heads when we think of fast food and 2) convenient and saves time when grabbing something to eat. I believe our brains have always been wired to find shortcuts, and society is just finding better ways to influence us by utilizing our desire for instant gratification. I bet people said the same thing about lack of patience when planes and trains came around. The only difference now is that we are getting faster!