Cognitive Lode – Brain gems for decision-makers(coglode.com)
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Cognitive Lode – Brain gems for decision-makers
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Jonathan Haidt touches on this in "The Happiness Hypothesis", though not specifically applying it to TV watching.
There's the standard issue of measuring happiness, sure, since it's hard to find other than a self-reported subjective measurement for it.
But in general, the principle that what matters most to keep us happy is a steady "upwards trajectory" where things keeps getting somewhat better is getting quite decently researched from a lot of angles. According to Haidt, the studies he refers to in his book supports the claim that once basic needs (food, shelter) has been met, happiness deviates from a lot of what we people tend to think:
It is only mildly correlated with wealth, for example, and then largely because being wealthy allows for more opportunity for an upwards trajectory. However, people who suddenly come into wealth (e.g. lottery winners) report a lot of happiness for a short interval after winning, but then quickly return to "base level".
And another example of the "hedonic adaptation" is that while mental illness such as depression can have a long term impact on happiness, but most other illness does not. Amputees, people with long term horrible chronic illnesses, people who are told they have only a few years left to live etc., that we often feel sorry for and assume will be miserable, all tend to return to base level happiness fairly quickly on average with the exception of those with degenerative conditions that put them on an ongoing downward trajectory. In fact, some groups will tend to be more happy than typical: Those who are slowly recovering from a horrible situation, and who thus see steady improvement in their situation.
With respect to the TV example, I find it quite plausible (with the caveat that I've not read the study either), as pacing in story-telling has already follows a pattern where you set up tension, release it and slows down the story, then set up tension again, for pretty much as long as people have been telling dramatic stories.
Pretty much all movies follow a pattern with "tension release" at least once or twice before the climax as well. I remember my English teacher drawing up diagrams of pacing a bunch of movies when I was in school even.
A perfect example of the alternative - to try to maintain an upwards trajectory as much as possible - would be Crank and Crank 2 with Jason Statham (though arguable even those movies cycle through periods with "lulls" in the action, just on a very accelerated schedule), which indeed tries to keep an insane pace throughout. In those movies it's used as a gimmick (Statham needs to keep his heart going with drugs etc. in the first movie, and needs to keep an artificial heart charged in the second, with antics that in no way try to be realistic at any point), but when you contrast the start of the first movie with the latter parts of the second, you see the result: To make it feel like the pressure is "kept up" the pace keeps accelerating to absolutely ridiculous levels. It's almost tiring to watch.
That ad breaks could provide some of the function in TV programs would thus not seem strange to me at all.
There's the standard issue of measuring happiness, sure, since it's hard to find other than a self-reported subjective measurement for it.
But in general, the principle that what matters most to keep us happy is a steady "upwards trajectory" where things keeps getting somewhat better is getting quite decently researched from a lot of angles. According to Haidt, the studies he refers to in his book supports the claim that once basic needs (food, shelter) has been met, happiness deviates from a lot of what we people tend to think:
It is only mildly correlated with wealth, for example, and then largely because being wealthy allows for more opportunity for an upwards trajectory. However, people who suddenly come into wealth (e.g. lottery winners) report a lot of happiness for a short interval after winning, but then quickly return to "base level".
And another example of the "hedonic adaptation" is that while mental illness such as depression can have a long term impact on happiness, but most other illness does not. Amputees, people with long term horrible chronic illnesses, people who are told they have only a few years left to live etc., that we often feel sorry for and assume will be miserable, all tend to return to base level happiness fairly quickly on average with the exception of those with degenerative conditions that put them on an ongoing downward trajectory. In fact, some groups will tend to be more happy than typical: Those who are slowly recovering from a horrible situation, and who thus see steady improvement in their situation.
With respect to the TV example, I find it quite plausible (with the caveat that I've not read the study either), as pacing in story-telling has already follows a pattern where you set up tension, release it and slows down the story, then set up tension again, for pretty much as long as people have been telling dramatic stories.
Pretty much all movies follow a pattern with "tension release" at least once or twice before the climax as well. I remember my English teacher drawing up diagrams of pacing a bunch of movies when I was in school even.
A perfect example of the alternative - to try to maintain an upwards trajectory as much as possible - would be Crank and Crank 2 with Jason Statham (though arguable even those movies cycle through periods with "lulls" in the action, just on a very accelerated schedule), which indeed tries to keep an insane pace throughout. In those movies it's used as a gimmick (Statham needs to keep his heart going with drugs etc. in the first movie, and needs to keep an artificial heart charged in the second, with antics that in no way try to be realistic at any point), but when you contrast the start of the first movie with the latter parts of the second, you see the result: To make it feel like the pressure is "kept up" the pace keeps accelerating to absolutely ridiculous levels. It's almost tiring to watch.
That ad breaks could provide some of the function in TV programs would thus not seem strange to me at all.
The tv show Lost was really good at using the commercial breaks for tension building.
Well, I suppose there is a presumption of an enjoyable TV program to start with. I'd overlooked that. I suppose it's quite possible (and maybe even common) to craft TV that is so awful that even the commercials serve to improve the experience (some celebrity game shows come to mind, not to mention certain news outlets...)
But if we assume TV that people have elected to watch in the first place, what do you think of the argument that viewers would likely choose the "without commercials" option?
Assuming this is so, are they fooling themselves into inferior enjoyment?
But if we assume TV that people have elected to watch in the first place, what do you think of the argument that viewers would likely choose the "without commercials" option?
Assuming this is so, are they fooling themselves into inferior enjoyment?
I do believe viewers would likely choose the "without commercials" option ahead of time, but chances are good that they would enjoy it less. We're horribly bad at guessing what will provide the best payoff for us over time. And even when we know, we are horribly bad at making use of that knowledge rather than letting ourselves be led by impulses.
To take the lottery example: How many people do you think would opt for $1m today vs. $10000 this year, $12000 the following year, $14000 the year after, and so on, until they'd have received, say, $3m? Pretty much all research into both lottery winners and the way we judge rewards now vs. later indicates that most of us would likely opt for the $1m now, yet be less happy for it over time vs. an option where we can look forward to steadily increasing rewards over a long period of time.
I'd be willing to be that you could show people data on how the options would likely affect their happiness, and the majority of people would still opt for the $1m now, and go out and start spending.
To take the lottery example: How many people do you think would opt for $1m today vs. $10000 this year, $12000 the following year, $14000 the year after, and so on, until they'd have received, say, $3m? Pretty much all research into both lottery winners and the way we judge rewards now vs. later indicates that most of us would likely opt for the $1m now, yet be less happy for it over time vs. an option where we can look forward to steadily increasing rewards over a long period of time.
I'd be willing to be that you could show people data on how the options would likely affect their happiness, and the majority of people would still opt for the $1m now, and go out and start spending.
There's also a difference between enjoying a TV program with commercial breaks and a movie with commercial breaks. The writers of the tv programs are optimizing plot/pacing/scene changes for the fact there will be commercials-- for instance having a mini-cliffhanger before the commercial break or using the commercial to avoid an awkward transition from scenes of very different emotional content.
In other words, it's not really an objective test, since TV programs were built with commercial breaks in-mind.
In other words, it's not really an objective test, since TV programs were built with commercial breaks in-mind.
Thanks for the feedback! It would be great if you could post this on http://coglode.com/gems/hedonic-adaptation to spark some conversation.
I didn't realize that each item in your list linked to another page with more elaboration until I saw your previous comment.
Ah updated now with a little cheeky arrow. Hope that helps! Check it out: http://coglode.com
Yes, we're making some small UI tweaks right now to make that more apparent. Thanks for the feedback!
Round Price Preference
Yes, please, let's stop the 99.99 crap. And with sales tax the point is moot
Even better, let's not have more than 3 significant digits on prices (ok, maybe 4 or 5 for high value items)
Yes, please, let's stop the 99.99 crap. And with sales tax the point is moot
Even better, let's not have more than 3 significant digits on prices (ok, maybe 4 or 5 for high value items)
Damn right. Add the comment on http://coglode.com/gems/round-pricing-preference to start the debate!
(Hello from Israel) it's a new law around here that forces marketers to publish prices as a multiplier of 0.05
In a similar way, in Canada the pennies (0.01) have been phased out so everything is rounded up or down to multiples of five cents.
Ron Johnson thought that, so removed the cheap pricing tricks from JCPenney.
People stopped buying.
He was fired.
People stopped buying.
He was fired.
Yeah I was going to say that the round pricing rule here is one of the more controversial ones. It's been proven time and time again that prices set at .99 will outsell their rounded competition by quite a way. It doesn't even have to be cents or pennies, something priced at $49 will outsell the one at $50.
I remember hearing of one study (I read this in Priceless by William Poundstone, good book), that compared the exact same product sold at $44, $39 and $34 through a split-tested mail order catalogue. Obviously, the $39 outsold the $44 as it was cheaper - but bizarrely, the $39 also outsold the $34.
There is a very weird power to the number 9 in pricing, I wouldn't underestimate it. If anyone wants further reading, I suggest googling "Charm Prices".
I remember hearing of one study (I read this in Priceless by William Poundstone, good book), that compared the exact same product sold at $44, $39 and $34 through a split-tested mail order catalogue. Obviously, the $39 outsold the $44 as it was cheaper - but bizarrely, the $39 also outsold the $34.
There is a very weird power to the number 9 in pricing, I wouldn't underestimate it. If anyone wants further reading, I suggest googling "Charm Prices".
One explanation I've seen, is that the "9" prices have come to be associated with discounts. $34 sounds like it was set based on cost. $39 sounds like it was set to be cheaper than something.
No, I think he removed the "Sale: Was $30, today it's $10" and put the $10 without the "pretend sale".
This is a visually appealing interface for wikipedia's list of cognitive biases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
This is fun stuff. I'd love to read more of them in the future, but there's no feed link. Has RSS really died? I'm often surprised by how many sites skip including these now.
No probs! Follow our twitter feed https://twitter.com/coglode We'll be putting all new gems out via that. Hope that helps!
If you enjoy this, you might like 'To Sell is Human'. It's full of little treasures. http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is-human/
FWIW, I couldn't get it to load in Firefox. Switching over to Chrome worked in case anyone runs into the same problem.
Firefox worked for me...
The fallacy recognition fallacy:
The idea that if you recognize one of those fallacies at play, it's the dominant fallacy and hence correcting it will lead to the predicted results.
Reality is a complicated mesh of variables, and we judge it with a complicated mesh of heuristics.
Studying the fallacies is good, but don't think you suddenly have an explanation & solution for all the problems you see around yourself.
The idea that if you recognize one of those fallacies at play, it's the dominant fallacy and hence correcting it will lead to the predicted results.
Reality is a complicated mesh of variables, and we judge it with a complicated mesh of heuristics.
Studying the fallacies is good, but don't think you suddenly have an explanation & solution for all the problems you see around yourself.
Great one Mantrax3! We'll add that on http://coglode.com I think!
> Hedonic Adaptation ... Enjoyment of a television program is actually enhanced by commercial interruptions, despite what viewers say.
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.)
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.
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."