Top Quotes: “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” — Dan Ariely
Relativity
“I read these offers one at a time. The first offer — the Internet subscription for $59-seemed reasonable. The second option — the $125 print subscription — seemed a bit expensive, but still reasonable.
But then I read the third option: a print and Internet subscription for $125. I read it twice before my eye ran back to the previous options. Who would want to buy the print option alone, I wondered, when both the Internet and the print subscriptions were offered for the same price? Now, the print-only option may have been a typographical error, but I suspect that the clever people at the Economist’s London offices (and they are clever — and quite mischievous in a British sort of way) were actually manipulating me. I am pretty certain that they wanted me to skip the Internet-only option (which they assumed would be my choice, since I was reading the advertisement on the Web) and jump to the more expensive option: Internet and print.
But how could they manipulate me? I suspect it’s because the Economist’s marketing wizards knew something important about human behavior: humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly. (For instance, we don’t know how much a six-cylinder car is worth, but we can assume it’s more expensive than the four-cylinder model.)
In the case of the Economist, I may not have known whether the Internet-only subscription at $59 was a better deal than the print-only option at $125. But I certainly knew that the print-and-Internet option for $125 was better than the print-only option at $125. In fact, you could reasonably deduce that in the combination package, the Internet subscription is free! “It’s a bloody steal — go for it, governor!” I could almost hear them shout from the riverbanks of the Thames. And I have to admit, if I had been inclined to subscribe I probably would have taken the package deal myself. (Later, when I tested the offer on a large number of participants, the vast majority preferred the Internet-and-print deal.)
So what was going on here? Let me start with a fundamental observation: most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context. We don’t know what kind of racing bike we want — until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We don’t know what kind of speaker system we like — until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one. We don’t even know what we want to do with our lives — until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative, and that’s the point.”
“Sam also knows that given three choices, most people will take the middle choice. So guess which television Sam prices as the middle option? That’s right — the one he wants to sell!”
“One thing Rapp has learned is that high-priced entrées on the menu boost revenue for the restaurant — even if no one buys them. Why? Because even though people generally won’t buy the most expensive dish on the menu, they will order the second most expensive dish.”
“We not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable — and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.
That may be a confusing thought, so let me give you an example. Suppose you’re shopping for a house in a new town. Your real estate agent guides you to three houses, all of which interest you. One of them is a contemporary, and two are colonials. All three cost about the same; they are all equally desirable; and the only difference is that one of the colonials (the “decoy”) needs a new roof and the owner has knocked a few thousand dollars off the price to cover the additional expense.
So which one will you choose?
The chances are good that you will not choose the contemporary and you will not choose the colonial that needs the new roof, but you will choose the other colonial. Why? Here’s the rationale (which is actually quite irrational). We like to make decisions based on comparisons. In the case of the three houses, we don’t know much about the contemporary (we don’t have another house to compare it with), so that house goes on the sidelines. But we do know that one of the colonials is better than the other one. That is, the colonial with the good roof is better than the one with the bad roof. Therefore, we will reason that it is better overall and go for the colonial with the good roof, spurning the contemporary and the colonial that needs a new roof.”
“When Williams-Sonoma first introduced a home “bread bakery” machine (for $275), most consumers were not interested. What was a home bread-making machine, anyway? Was it good or bad? Did one really need home-baked bread? Why not just buy a fancy coffeemaker sitting nearby instead? Flustered by poor sales, the manufacturer of the bread machine brought in a marketing research firm, which suggested a fix: introduce an additional model of the bread maker, one that was not only larger but priced about 50 percent higher than the initial machine.
Now sales began to rise.”
“An ironic aspect of this story is that in 1993, federal securities regulators forced companies, for the first time, to reveal details about the pay and perks of their top executives. The idea was that once pay was in the open, boards would be reluctant to give executives outrageous salaries and benefits. This, it was hoped, would stop the rise in executive compensation, which neither regulation, legislation, nor shareholder pressure had been able to stop. And indeed, it needed to stop: in 1976 the average CEO was paid 36 times as much as the average worker. By 1993, the average CEO was paid 131 times as much.
But guess what happened. Once salaries became public information, the media regularly ran special stories ranking CEOs by pay. Rather than suppressing the executive perks, the publicity had CEOs in America comparing their pay with that of everyone else. In response, executives’ salaries skyrocketed. The trend was further “helped” by compensation consulting firms (scathingly dubbed “Ratchet, Ratchet, and Bingo” by the investor Warren Buffett) that advised their CEO clients to demand outrageous raises. The result? Now the average CEO makes about 369 times as much as the average worker — about three times the salary before executive compensation went public.”
Anchors
“The students with the highest-ending social security digits (from 80 to 99) bid highest, while those with the lowest-ending numbers (1 to 20) bid lowest. The top 20 percent, for instance, bid an average of $56 for the cordless keyboard; the bottom 20 percent bid an average of $16. In the end, we could see that students with social security numbers ending in the upper 20 percent placed bids that were 216 to 346 percent higher than those of the students with social security numbers ending in the lowest 20 percent (see table on the facing page).
Now if the last two digits of your social security number are a high number I know what you must be thinking: “I’ve been paying too much for everything my entire life!” This is not the case, however. Social security numbers were the anchor in this experiment only because we requested them.”
“The data had one more interesting aspect. Although the willingness to pay for these items was arbitrary, there was also a logical, coherent aspect to it. When we looked at the bids for the two pairs of related items (the two wines and the two computer components), their relative prices seemed incredibly logical. Everyone was willing to pay more for the keyboard than for the trackball — and also pay more for the 1996 Hermitage than for the 1998 Côtes du Rhône. The significance of this is that once the participants were willing to pay a certain price for one product, their willingness to pay for other items in the same product category was judged relative to that first price (the anchor).
This, then, is what we call arbitrary coherence. Initial prices are largely “arbitrary” and can be influenced by responses to random questions; but once those prices are established in our minds, they shape not only what we are willing to pay for an item, but also how much we are willing to pay for related products (this makes them coherent).”
“Ori Simonsohn (a professor at the University of Pennsylvania) and George Lowenstein, for example, found that people who move to a new city generally remain anchored to the prices they paid for housing in their former city. In their study they found that people who move from inexpensive markets (say, Lubbock, Texas) to moderately priced cities (say, Pittsburgh) don’t increase their spending to fit the new market. Rather, these people spend an amount similar to what they were used to in the previous market, even if this means having to squeeze themselves and their families into smaller or less comfortable homes. Likewise, transplants from more expensive cities sink the same dollars into their new housing situation as they did in the past. People who move from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, in other words, don’t generally downsize their spending much once they hit Pennsylvania: they spend an amount similar to what they used to spend in Los Angeles.”
“Our first decisions resonate over a long sequence of decisions. First impressions are important, whether they involve remembering that our first DVD player cost much more than such players cost today (and realizing that, in comparison, the current prices are a steal) or remembering that gas was once a dollar a gallon, which makes every trip to the gas station a painful experience. In all these cases the random, and not so random, anchors that we encountered along the way and were swayed by remain with us long after the initial decision itself.”
“Starbucks did everything in its power, in other words, to make the experience feel different — so different that we would not use the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts as an anchor, but instead would be open to the new anchor that Starbucks was preparing for us. And that, to a great extent, is how Starbucks succeeded.”
“We decide whether or not to purchase Big Macs, smoke, run red ights, take vacations in Patagonia, listen to Tchaikovsky, slave away at doctoral dissertations, marry, have children, live in the suburbs, vote Republican, and so on. According to economic theory, we base these decisions on our fundamental values — our likes and dislikes.
But what are the main lessons from these experiments about our lives in general? Could it be that the lives we have so carefully crafted are largely just a product of arbitrary coherence? Could it be that we made arbitrary decisions at some point in the past (like the goslings that adopted Lorenz as their parent) and have built our lives on them ever since, assuming that the original decisions were wise? Is that how we chose our careers, our spouses, the clothes we wear, and the way we style our hair? Were they smart decisions in the first place? Or were they partially random first imprints that have run wild?
Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” But suppose we are nothing more than the sum of our first, naive, random behaviors. What then?
These questions may be tough nuts to crack, but in terms of our personal lives, we can actively improve on our irrational behaviors. We can start by becoming aware of our vulnerabilities. Suppose you’re planning to buy a cutting-edge cell phone (the one with the three-megapixel, 8x zoom digital camera), or even a daily $4 cup of gourmet coffee. You might begin by questioning that habit. How did it begin? Second, ask yourself what amount of pleasure you will be getting out of it. Is the pleasure as much as you thought you would get? Could you cut back a little and better spend the remaining money on something else? With everything you do, in fact, you should train yourself to question your repeated behaviors. In the case of the cell phone, could you take a step back from the cutting edge, reduce your outlay, and use some of the money for something else? And as for the coffee — rather than asking which blend of coffee you will have today, ask yourself whether you should even be having that habitual cup of expensive coffee at all.
We should also pay particular attention to the first decision we make in what is going to be a long stream of decisions (about clothing, food, etc.).”
FREE
“Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. Why? I think it’s because humans are intrinsically afraid of loss. The real allure of FREE! is tied to this fear. There’s no visible possibility of loss when we choose a FREE! item (it’s free).
But suppose we choose the item that’s not free. Uh-oh, now there’s a risk of having made a poor decision.”
“Here’s a quiz. Suppose I offered you a choice between a free $10 Amazon gift certificate and a $20 gift certificate for seven dollars. Think quickly. Which would you take?
If you jumped for the FREE! certificate, you would have been like most of the people we tested at one of the malls in Boston. But look again: a $20 gift certificate for seven dollars delivers a $13 profit. That’s clearly better than getting a $10 certificate free (earning $10). Can you see the irrational behavior in action?”
“SO YOU CAN maintain the status quo with a 20-cent fee (as in the case of Amazon’s shipping in France), or you can start a stampede by offering something FREE! Think how powerful that idea is! Zero is not just another discount. Zero is a different place. The difference between two cents and one cent is small. But the difference between one cent and zero is huge!”
“Similarly, we can use FREE! to drive social policy. Want people to drive electric cars? Don’t just lower the registration and inspection fees — eliminate them, so that you have created FREE.”
“If we are dining with others, we are happiest when we pay nothing (free!); we are less happy when we have to pay something; and the additional dollars we fork over cause us a smaller and smaller additional amount of pain as the size of the bill increases. The logical conclusion is that one person should pay the whole bill.
If you’re still unconvinced, consider the following example: Imagine that four people share a meal and the bill comes to $100. Now, if everyone at the table pays $25, every person would feel some pain of paying. In order to make this less abstract, let’s assign “units” as a measure of this pain. We’ll assume that paying $25 translates into 10 units of pain for a total of 40 units of pain for the whole table when it comes time to split the bill. But what if one person pays the entire bill? Since the pain of paying does not increase linearly with the amount of payment, the person who is paying will feel 10 units of pain for the first $25 that he or she pays; maybe 7 units for the next $25; 5 units for the next $25; and 4 units for the last $25. The total of 26 units of pain lowers the amount of pain for the entire table by 14 units. The general point is this: we all love getting our meals for nothing, and as long as we can alternate payers, we can enjoy many free! dinners and derive greater overall benefit from our friendships in the process.”
Market Norms
“To find out just where gifts fall on the line between social and market norms, James and I decided on a new experiment. This time, we didn’t offer our participants money for dragging circles across a computer screen; we offered them gifts instead. We replaced the 50-cent reward with a Snickers bar (worth about 50 cents), and the five-dollar incentive with a box of Godiva chocolates (worth about five dollars).
The participants came to the lab, got their reward, worked as much as they liked, and left. Then we looked at the results. As it turned out, all three experimental groups worked about equally hard during the task, regardless of whether they got a small Snickers bar (these participants dragged on average 162 circles), the Godiva chocolates (these participants dragged on average 169 circles), or nothing at all (these participants dragged on average 168 circles). The conclusion: no one is offended by a small gift, because even small gifts keep us in the social exchange world and away from market norms.”
“The most interesting part occurred a few weeks later, when the day care center removed the fine. Now the center was back to the social norm. Would the parents also return to the social norm? Would their guilt return as well? Not at all. Once the fine was removed, the behavior of the parents didn’t change. They continued to pick up their kids late. In fact, when the fine was removed, there was a slight increase in the number of tardy pickups (after all, both the social norms and the fine had been removed).
This experiment illustrates an unfortunate fact: when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time. In other words, social relationships are not easy to reestablish. Once the bloom is off the rose — once a social norm is trumped by a market norm — it will rarely return.”
“What happens when a customer’s check bounces? If the relationship is based on market norms, the bank charges a fee, and the customer shakes it off. Business is business. While the fee is annoying, it’s nonetheless acceptable. In a social relationship, however, a hefty late fee — rather than a friendly call from the manager or an automatic fee waiver — is not only a relationship-killer; it’s a stab in the back. Consumers will take personal offense. They’ll leave the bank angry and spend hours complaining to their friends about this awful bank. After all, this was a relationship framed as a social exchange. No matter how many cookies, slogans, and tokens of friendship a bank provides, one violation of the social exchange means that the consumer is back to the market exchange. It can happen that quickly.
What’s the upshot? If you’re a company, my advice is to remember that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t treat your customers like family one moment and then treat them impersonally — or, even worse, as a nuisance or a competitor — a moment later when this becomes more convenient or profitable.”
“We should probably first rethink school curricula, and link them in more obvious ways to social goals (elimination of poverty and crime, elevation of human rights, etc.), technological goals (boosting energy conservation, space exploration, nanotechnology, etc.), and medical goals (cures for cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc.) that we care about as a society. This way the students, teachers, and parents might see the larger point in education and become more enthusiastic and motivated about it.”
“What these results mean is that the theory of demand is a solid one — except when we’re dealing with the price of zero. Whenever the price is not part of the exchange, social norms become entangled. These social norms get people to consider the welfare of others and, therefore, limit consumption to a level that does not place too much of a burden on the available resource. In essence, when prices are zero and social norms are a part of the equation, people look at the world as a communal good. The important lesson from all of this? Not mentioning prices ushers in social norms, and with those social norms, we start caring more about others.”
State of Mind
“In every case, our bright young participants answered the questions very differently when they were aroused from when they were in a “cold” state. Across the 19 questions about sexual preferences, when Roy and all the other participants were aroused they predicted that their desire to engage in a variety of somewhat odd sexual activities would be nearly twice as high as (72 percent higher than) they had predicted when they were cold. For example, the idea of enjoying contact with animals was more than twice as appealing when they were in a state of arousal as when they were in a cold state. In the five questions about their propensity to engage in immoral activities, when they were aroused they predicted their propensity to be more than twice as high as (136 percent higher than) they had predicted in the cold state. Similarly, in the set of questions about using condoms, and despite the warnings that had been hammered into them over the years about the importance of condoms, they were 25 percent more likely in the aroused state than in the cold state to predict that they would forego condoms. In all these cases they failed to predict the influence of arousal on their sexual preferences, morality, and approach to safe sex.”
““But suppose one credit card company stepped out of the pack,” I continued, “and identified itself as a good guy — as an advocate for the credit-crunched consumer? Suppose one company had the guts to offer a card that would actually help consumers control their credit, and better still, divert some of their money into long-term savings?” I glanced around the room. “My bet is that thousands of consumers would cut up their other credit cards — and sign up with you!””
Trying It On
“’Virtual ownership,” of course, is one mainspring of the advertising industry. We see a happy couple driving down the California coastline in a BMW convertible, and we imagine ourselves there. We get a catalog of hiking clothing from Patagonia, see a polyester fleece pullover, and — poof — we start thinking of it as ours. The trap is set, and we willingly walk in. We become partial owners even before we own anything.”
“Another example of the same hook is the “30-day money-back guarantee.” If we are not sure whether or not we should get a new sofa, the guarantee of being able to change our mind later may push us over the hump so that we end up getting it. We fail to appreciate how our perspective will shift once we have it at home, and how we will start viewing the sofa — as ours — and consequently start viewing returning it as a loss. We might think we are taking it home only to try it out for a few days, but in fact we are becoming owners of it and are unaware of the emotions the sofa can ignite in us.”
“As it turned out, the students who found out about the vinegar after drinking the beer liked the beer much better than those who were told about the vinegar up front. In fact, those who were told afterward about the vinegar liked the beer just as much as those who weren’t aware that there was any vinegar in the beer at all.
What does this suggest? Let me give you another example. Suppose Aunt Darcy is having a garage sale, trying to get rid of many things she collected during her long life. A car pulls up, some people get out, and before long they are gathered around one of the oil paintings propped up against the wall. Yes, you agree with them, it does look like a fine example of early American primitivism. But do you tell them that Aunt Darcy copied it from a photograph just a few years earlier?
My inclination, since I am an honest, upright person, would be to tell them. But should you tell them before or after they finish admiring the painting? According to our beer studies, you and Aunt Darcy would be better off keeping the information under wraps until after the examination. I’m not saying that this would entice the for your daughter’s wedding.”
Expectations
“Josephine’s Catering boasts about its “delicious Asian-style ginger chicken” and its “flavorful Greek salad with kalamata olives and feta cheese.” Another caterer, Culinary Sensations, offers a “succulent organic breast of chicken roasted to perfection and drizzled with a merlot demi-glace, resting in a bed of herbed Israeli couscous” and a “mélange of the freshest roma cherry tomatoes and crisp field greens, paired with a warm circle of chèvre in a fruity raspberry vinagrette.” Although there is no way to know whether Culinary Sensations’ food is any better than Josephine’s, the sheer depth of the description may lead us to expect greater things from the simple tomato and goat cheese salad. This, accordingly, increases the chance that we (and our guests, if we give them the description of the dish) will rave over it.
This principle, so useful to caterers, is available to everyone. We can add small things that sound exotic and fashionable to our cooking (chipotle-mango sauces seem all the rage right now, or try buffalo instead of beef). These ingredients might not make the dish any better in a blind taste test; but by changing our expectations, they can effectively influence the taste when we have this pre-knowledge.”
“After the participants completed the scrambled-sentence task, they went to another laboratory to participate in what was purportedly a second task. When they arrived at the second laboratory, they found the experimenter apparently in the midst of trying to explain the task to an uncomprehending participant who was just not getting it (this supposed participant was in fact not a real participant but a confederate working for the experimenter). How long do you think it took the real participants to interrupt the conversation and ask what they should do next?
The amount of waiting depended on what type of words had been involved in the scrambled-sentence task. Those who had worked with the set of polite words patiently waited for about 9.3 minutes before they interrupted, whereas those who had worked with the set of rude words waited only about 5.5 minutes before interrupting.”
“If you were like 98 percent of the people who passed through L’Enfant Plaza Station that morning, you would have hurried by, oblivious of the performance. Only 27 out of 1,097 (2.5 percent) put money into Bell’s open Stradivarius violin case and only 7 (0.5 percent) stopped to listen for more than a minute. Bell played for a little less than an hour and made about $32, which is probably not bad for your basic street performer, but no doubt humbling to a man used to making far, far more for one minute of playing.”
“He responded that he was really not all that surprised, and admitted that expectation is an important part of the way we experience music. Bell told me that it takes an appropriate setting to help people appreciate a live classical music performance — a listener needs to be sitting in a comfortable, faux velvet seat, and surrounded by the acoustics of a concert hall. And when people adorn themselves in silk, perfume, and cashmere, they seem to appreciate the costly performance much more.
“What if we did the opposite experiment?” I asked. “What if we put a mediocre player in Carnegie Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic? The expectations would be very high but the quality would not. Would people discern the difference and would their pleasure be quashed?” Bell thought for a moment. “In this case,” he said, “the expectations would triumph over the experience.” Furthermore, he said he could think of a few people who were not great violinists but received wild applause because they were in the right environment.”
“What about positive expectations? If I listen to Joshua Bell with no expectations, the experience is not going to be nearly as satisfying or pleasurable as if I listen to him and say to myself, “My god, how lucky I am to be listening to Joshua Bell play live in front of me.” My knowledge that Bell is one of the best players in the world contributes immeasurably to my pleasure.
As it turns out, positive expectations allow us to enjoy things more and improve our perception of the world around us. The danger of expecting nothing is that, in the end, it might be all we’ll get.”
“Before recent times, almost all medicines were placebos. Eye of the toad, wing of the bat, dried fox lungs, mercury, mineral water, cocaine, an electric current: these were all touted as suitable cures for various ailments.”
“We asked a group of students to keep track of whether they used full-price or discount medicines for their seasonal colds, and if so, how well those remedies worked. At the end of the semester, 13 participants said they’d paid list price and 16 had bought discount drugs. Which group felt better? I think you can guess by now: the 13 who paid the list price reported significantly better medical outcomes.”
“In reality, physicians provide placebos all the time. For instance, a study done in 2003 found that more than one-third of patients who received antibiotics for a sore throat were later found to have viral infections, for which an antibiotic does absolutely no good (and possibly contributes to the rising number of drug-resistant bacterial infections that threaten us all). But do you think doctors will stop handing us antibiotics when we have viral colds? Even when doctors know that a cold is viral rather than bacterial (and many colds are viral), they still know very well that the patient wants some sort of relief; most commonly, the patient expects to walk out with a prescription. Is it right for the physician to fill this psychic need?”
“In the United States very few surgical procedures are tested scientifically. For that reason, we don’t really know whether many operations really offer a cure, or whether, like many of their predecessors, they are effective merely because of their placebo effect.”
“He discovered that by searching the internet for the word Comcast (or sometimes Comcrap), he could locate unhappy customers who were venting to themselves and to their friends. He then took the next step and started corresponding with the complainers about their problems before they became formal complaints. (Other companies — including JetBlue, General Motors, Kodak, Dell, and Domino’s Pizza — also track customers’ comments on Twitter and elsewhere.)
A more extreme version of this idea is for companies to make themselves transparent and vulnerable. By setting up Web sites where consumers can talk freely with the company and one another about products and services, warts and all, companies can expose themselves to large negative consequences if they ever misbehave. This type of transparency is a sort of commitment device that companies can use to force themselves to behave in a trustworthy way, even when they are tempted to do otherwise.”
“The big question is what happened to the other group — the students who first wrote down the Ten Commandments, then took the test, and then ripped up their worksheets. This, as sportscasters say, was the group to watch. Would they cheat — or would the Ten Commandments have an effect on their integrity? The result surprised even us: the students who had been asked to recall the Ten Commandments had not cheated at all. They averaged three correct answers — the same basic score as the group that could not cheat, and one less than those who were able to cheat but had recalled the names of the books.”
“What was remarkable was the third situation — in which the participants pocketed their answer sheets, but had also signed the honor code statement. In this case they claimed to have solved, on average, three problems — exactly the same number as the control group. This outcome was similar to the results we achieved with the Ten Commandments — when a moral reminder eliminated cheating altogether. The effect of signing a statement about an honor code is particularly amazing when we take into account that MIT doesn’t even have an honor code.
So we learned that people cheat when they have a chance to do so, but they don’t cheat as much as they could. Moreover, once they begin thinking about honesty — whether by recalling the Ten Commandments or by signing a simple statement — they stop cheating completely. In other words, when we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted, then we are much more likely to be honest.”
“The cans of Coke quickly disappeared; within 72 hours every one of them was gone. But what a different story with the money! The plates of dollar bills remained untouched for 72 hours, until I removed them from the refrigerators.
So what’s going on here?
When we look at the world around us, much of the dishonesty we see involves cheating that is one step removed from cash. Companies cheat with their accounting practices; executives cheat by using backdated stock options; lobbyists cheat by underwriting parties for politicians; drug companies cheat by sending doctors and their wives off on posh vacations. To be sure, these people don’t cheat with cold cash (except occasionally). And that’s my point: cheating is a lot easier when it’s a step removed from money.”
“We found that when people order out loud in sequence, they choose differently from when they order in private. When ordering sequentially (publicly), they order more types of beer per table — in essence opting for variety. A basic way to understand this is by thinking about the Summer Wheat Ale. This brew was not very attractive to most people. But when the other beers were “taken,” our participants felt that they had to choose something different — perhaps to show that they had a mind of their own and weren’t trying to copy the others — and so they chose a different beer, one that they may not have initially wanted, but one that conveyed their individuality.
What about their enjoyment of the beer? It stands to reason that if people choose beer that nobody has chosen just to convey uniqueness, they will probably end up with a beer that they don’t really want or like. And indeed this was the case. Overall, those who made their choices out loud, in the standard way that food is ordered at restaurants, were not as happy with their selections as those who made their choices privately.”
