Mind & EverydayFact
Dopamine isn't a pleasure chemical, it's a surprise signal.
In 1997 Wolfram Schultz recorded dopamine neurons in monkeys. They fired at unexpected juice. Once a light reliably predicted the juice, they fired at the light and no longer at the juice. If the juice then failed to arrive, activity dropped below baseline. Dopamine encodes the gap between expectation and outcome, not enjoyment.
Useful: That's why the notification excites you more than the message itself.
Source: doi.org