Why do people play the lottery? Why do people think they're in the slowest line at the grocery store or the most congested traffic lane?
It's because the human mind focuses on memorable things like lottery winners holding big checks on TV and not on less memorable things like lines that were quick to get through, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert explained in a lecture last night.
Gilbert told a McCosh 50 audience of several hundred students, faculty and community members "How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times," describing the thought processes behind making everyday decisions. Gilbert's wisdom was backed by findings from 17th century scholars Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal, who developed our current concepts of probability.
He stressed that wrong decisions are often made when people judge the value of options within their more immediate contexts.
"Real estate agents have used a thing called the contrast effect for a long time," Gilbert said. "The first place they take you to is, well, basically a crack house. Then they bring you to a simple middle class home. You're so relieved it's not like the previous one that you just buy it."
He also cited a psychological study where students were asked to rate their level of satisfaction from eating potato chips.
One set of students were asked to eat the chips in a room with chocolate in the corner, while the other set was placed in a room that had Spam in the corner. The satisfaction ratings of those eating the chips while in the Spam room were higher than the ratings of those in the chocolate room. The Spam room contestants rated the chips higher because they knew that what they were eating was much better than Spam. The value of a decision changes based on what it's being compared to.
Decision making is also impaired when comparing a choice to an option from the past. Gilbert said that if someone has the habit of buying coffee every morning, and then one morning the price of coffee increases, he will be unlikely to buy the coffee. He bases his decision on information from the past without comparing the present options of getting coffee or not and of whether he really wants the coffee now.
"Your eyes and mind detect change," he said of the coffee example.
"For instance, a guy who smells bad on a plane cannot detect how badly he smells because the odor on himself is not changing."
Whether you think something changed or not will often determine what decision you make. But Gilbert said that though humans make decisions in this way, it is better to compare an option to other present options. For instance, whether someone buys a Big Mac shouldn't depend on whether the price is up or down from last year. It should depend on whether that person can buy something that he or she wants more than that Big Mac with the same amount of money.
The lecture was the Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture and was the first in the Princeton Public Lectures Series.
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