It's midnight after a long day at the office and you're just finishing up your last batch of work.

You have an early meeting tomorrow. You're exhausted and ready for bed.

So you start to gather up your things and then you feel a buzz on your wrist.

It's your strive pedometer, a gadget that not only counts your steps but also sends you extra challenges.

If you complete them, you win points in the pedometer's virtual world.

And now you have an opportunity.

If you climb 20 steps, you get triple points.

You think, I can just take the flight of stairs down to the basement and back upstairs

and I'll be done and then I'll go to bed. So off you go. But just as you're about to finish, you can get another big bonus if you do just 40 more.

Fast forward to 2 a.m. You've been going up and down the basement steps for two hours.

It's like the Strive knows you're ready for bed.

Every time you're on your last few steps, it pushes another offer you can't refuse.

20 steps, 40 steps. This actually happened to Zoe Chance. She

kept going because a little device on her wrist told her to. And Zoe of all people should have known better. She's a professor

at the Yale School of Management specifically an expert on how people are

manipulated into doing things that go against all common sense.

Zoe originally bought the pedometer to show it to students in a class she teaches called

mastering influence and persuasion.

Still, she just climbed the height of the Empire State Building

in the middle of the night for the sake of some meaningless virtual rewards.

How did a highly accomplished professor who literally teaches the stuff for a living get sucked in?

Zoe Chance was distractible and the technology was right there to distract her.

...