“Lollapalooza effects,” Charlie Munger’s word for stacking psychological principles until you reach the tipping point of explosive growth.

How can you leverage Lollapalooza effects? You can study Freud, Adler, and Jung. You can learn all the cognitive biases. Or you can cut straight to mastering the happiness chemicals, because what people care about most is happiness. And instead of the hundreds of cognitive biases and thousands of psychological principles, there are only four happiness chemicals.

Happiness is chemically dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin. Learn their triggers, stack them in your products, and you’ll make more customers happy.

Dopamine

The keywords for dopamine are novelty, discovery, and learning. The one word is NEW.

Surprise, difference, unpredictability—these design mechanisms release dopamine because they exploit our NEW radar. Change up a tempo unexpectedly, add pizazz, create that ‘aha’ feeling of discovery. Make ’em say “wow” about your product.

Endorphins

Challenge, mastery, concentration. HARD is the one word for endorphins.

Exercise is the king of endorphins. If your product can get your customers actually moving, then you have tons of opportunities to challenge them.

However, you can leverage the patterns that make exercise enjoyable. Challenge your customers in fun ways. Offer ways to get in the zone. Introduce a pro mode, focus mode, and ways to become a power user to produce more. Make extra effort worth it.

Serotonin

Status, prestige, and signaling are the key concepts associated with serotonin. SPECIAL is the one word.

Make your customers feel more powerful than their peers. Give them kudos, show them respect, appreciate them, and award them symbols that distinguish them in their industry.

The key here is to give them identities and symbols they can brag about.

Give your customers ways to say, “Look at me,” and get a “wow” in response.

Oxytocin

“We,” group signaling activities, and trust ignite oxytocin. LOYALTY, as in advancing an alliance, not merely connecting.

Make your customers feel like they’re a part of an alliance. Steve Jobs made you “Think Different” and inducted you into the tribe of geniuses. “The Artists” was how Steve Jobs leveraged oxytocin when building the first Macintosh. He had each member sign the inside of the first Mac’s case to make them feel like real artists.

Know your WE, and make sure WE do special things to signal our alliance.

Putting it together

Work on adding more and more triggers. Assess your product around the four happiness vectors. Strengthen the weak ones. Stack more when you reach a good level on each, and at some point, the “Lollapalooza effect” will take hold, and your product will be too good to ignore.

For example, Duolingo surprises users with new lesson formats (dopamine), challenges them with harder levels (endorphins), celebrates streaks and achievements (serotonin), and then builds a community around language learning goals (oxytocin).

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Activation Questions

• What is new and different about your product?
• How do you challenge customers to be better at your product?
• What are some brag-worthy status symbols and identities you could give your customers?
• Who are WE? What do WE do? What are WE striving for? How do WE become closer?