Uber uses psychological tricks to keep drivers on the road

Uber makes no secret of its ambitions to replace human drivers, testing autonomous cars in a highly public manner. But for the moment, and even for the next decade, the ride-hailing company remains reliant on an army of contractors. 

“We’ve underinvested in the driver experience," an Uber official said on a press call in March, "and relationships with many drivers are frayed. We are now re-examining everything we do in order to rebuild that love."

One of the techniques they use are driver earning targets to send messages to keep them from exiting the app. "The beauty of the messages that Uber sent Mr. Streeter and his fellow drivers is that the drivers need not have even had a specific income goal in mind in order for the messages to work," the New York Times writes. "Some of the most addictive games ever made, like the 1980s and ’90s hit Tetris, rely on a feeling of progress toward a goal that is always just beyond the player’s grasp. As the psychologist Adam Alter writes in his book Irresistible, video game designers even have a name for this mental state: the 'ludic loop.'" 

Another technique Uber has reportedly tested is using a female persona to interact with drivers, said the Times. For example, drivers have gotten messages from "Laura" saying something like, "Hey, the concert's about to let out. You should head over there." The majority of Uber drivers are male. 

In response, Uber spokesperson Michael Amodeo told the Times, “We show drivers areas of high demand or incentivize them to drive more... But any driver can stop work literally at the tap of a button — the decision whether or not to drive is 100 percent theirs.”
“The whole thing is like a video game,” says Eli Solomon, a veteran Uber and Lyft driver in the Chicago area, speaking the Times. In 2015, the company released a mobile game called Uber Drive to test peoples' city knowledge and recruit them to drive for Uber in real life.

Uber is one of the planet's biggest ride-hailing services with operations in more than 570 cities worldwide. Uber's drivers aren't considered employees, they're independent contractors.

So, the company has tried to do more to placate drivers over the past few months. After some drivers complained about the continuous rides feature, saying they never had a chance to go to the bathroom, Uber added a pause button. It's also working on a feature that lets drivers tell the app if they need to be at a certain place at a certain time, according to the Times.