I find a lot of this interesting and plausible, but have to take issue with:<p>> <i>Hedonic Adaptation</i> ... Enjoyment of a television program is actually enhanced by commercial interruptions, despite what viewers say.<p>I haven't read the study cited, so can only imagine the reasoning and data, but I suspect a lot is hanging on the way enjoyment is measured here. One way of measuring it might be to give people a choice between watching with and without commercials. I'd be pretty surprised if more chose "with." (Do people always act to maximise their own perceived enjoyment, all else being equal? Is there an objective measurement of enjoyment, beyond self-reported perceived enjoyment? Deep philosophical issues lurking here.)<p>I don't dispute the principle - my personal struggle with chocolate consumption bears out its applicability to abstinence/pleasure trade-offs there. But this particular datapoint doesn't ring true. Perhaps if the interruptions were furnished by pure radio silence I might be more amenable.<p>An anecdote relayed by my old CS tutor: in one production-line, where the shop floor "enjoyed" pop music via the radio, it was found that a regime of 15 minutes on / 15 minutes off gave the best results. As he put it: "When it's off they can look forward to it coming on; when it's on, they can look forward to it going off."