Choice and Change IV: Memory and Prediction

Turns out that no one really knows what they want. Again, obvious, but let me paraphrase and quote actual studies (isn't it awesome that someone was able to think up a study that proves this?):

Experiment 1 - "Participants in a laboratory study were asked to listen to a pair of very loud, unpleasant noises played through headphones. One noise lasted for eight seconds. The other lasted sixteen. The first eight seconds of the second noise were identical to the first noise, whereas the second eight seconds, while still loud and unpleasant, were not as loud. Later, the participants were told that they would have to listen to one of the noises again, but that they could choose which one. Clearly the second noise is worse - the unpleasantness lasted twice as long. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of people chose the second to be repeated."*

They chose the second noise because it was less loud and annoying at the end, and that's all they could remember. Apparently people base their memories on two things: how they felt at the most extreme part of the experience, and how they felt at the end. So in this case, the peak was the same, but the end was less annoying; the second noise was remembered as less uncomfortable overall.

Experiment II: "Each week [college students] had a three-hour seminar with one break that allowed [them] to stretch their legs, use the bathroom, clear their heads, and have something to eat. When the professor asked the students to pick a snack for each of the next three weeks, the students picked a variety, thinking they'd get tired of the same snack every week. In contrast, another group in the same study got to choose their snack every week, and these students, choosing for one week at a time, tended to choose the same thing each week."*

Basically one group had to predict what they would feel like eating and the other only had to decide what they felt like eating at the time. The predictors thought they'd be sick of eating the same thing for three weeks, but we're more creatures of habit than we think we are.

It's starting to look very much like we can't even trust ourselves to make an accurate assessment of the things we prefer! Which means, when we make important decisions, that we're setting ourselves up for disappointment when we come to realize that we're crappy predictors because we have crappy memories and we actually are very unhappy with the thing we chose.

Which also leads to regret. I have been leading to regret for the last three posts and have been neglecting it/putting it off because it's such a hard topic, but I guess the next post in the thread will have it.

*All quotations taken from pp.49-52 of The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

Choice and Change III: The Anatomy of a Decision

What I think I'll do now is take advantage of my natural tendency in fiction writing to give way, way too much detail about everything I describe, and slow time down to a crawl to pick apart the stages of a decision I made about a week ago.

(By the way, I'm not joking about that tendency. Once I spent four single spaced pages describing the way a cat moves. I have also spent twelve diving into the way a teacher looks at you when you ditch class. Five about the first step into an ice cave. The reason I sometimes sound stilted now is that I'm leaning purposefully in the opposite direction and sometimes I lean too far.)

It's not a big decision. Just a small decision. An everyday decision. What am I going to do now. That type of decision. The kind that accompanies every tiny crossroads - one path leading to quesadillas and one leading to warmed up soup. One leading to the library and research and one leading to someone's living room and a tabletop bong.

Last week's decision, though simple, is a three-crossroads-decision: work on the background organ chords of a song, struggle through further pages of a book that I mostly find unbearably trite but that my mom has insisted that I read, or watch an old episode of the disgustingly compelling show America's Next Top Model on YouTube.

I already have my preconceptions of the outcome of all three of my choices. Mostly I have vaguely formed ideas that I haven't bothered to examine, but hopefully by the time I write it all down that won't be true anymore.

ANTM is the most lazy option and also the most confusing. I will be entertained despite, and between, bouts of shame. I can eat while doing it, pluck my eyebrows, lose my endless heavy thoughts. There is no risk of failing at watching a reality show (maybe failing BY watching a reality show, but this somehow doesn't make its way into my automated math-maker). It's easy. It's fun. But it makes me feel sick after awhile, and afterwards, I know I will feel regret at the opportunities to be productive that I missed (and back to opportunity cost there).

It's also hard to fail at reading a book. Even when the book is formulaic, as I feel this one is, I can be swept up in it. It's also lazy; I can eat dinner while doing that as well. I'll feel slightly more like I'm doing something worthwhile, but still be angry that I wasted time on something I've read 5,000 times in creative writing workshops. It's definitely the middle option; the settling option. If I'm afraid to fail at something creative but I'm also afraid of too sickening of a regretful feeling, so I go for the one that has the least risk of both.

If I work on my song, it is eminently likely that I'll fall short of my expectations and of how the song sounds in my head. My organ skills will prove to be poorer than those of my imagination, and I'll notice while I'm recording it that some vocal harmony sounds bad, and I'll re-record it, but as it turns out, I'll re-record it worse and then have lost the original. I might realize a portion of the lyrics don't make sense, or feel at a loss about how to string them into a logical end. I might have trouble with the bridge, because I always have trouble with bridges.

But if - miraculously - none of these things happen, I will have spent time creating something I'm proud of. I'll listen to it later and be glad I did. I won't regret the time spent working on it - and in fact, I won't regret it even it if turns out to not turn out well.

So it's pretty clear empirically which one is the best decision for me to make. But - though I did make the right decision last week - more often than not, when faced with a similar decision, I'll choose America's Next Top Model, or, barring that, freeze, and end up surfing the internet thinking I'll eventually make a decision until it becomes - oops! - too late to make a decision. Whoops! I guess it's not my fault, then, if I didn't have time to make a decision!

It's funny how I can so totally absolve myself of regret by convincing myself that I didn't have a choice.