Decoding Love (12 page)
Authors: Andrew Trees
Surely, nothing could be easier than choosing a jam. We already know whether we like raspberry or strawberry, seedless or seeds. Picking a jam involves none of the knotty problems of choosing a romantic partner. Yet even something as straightforward as buying jam can become impossibly difficult when we are presented with too many choices. Too many jams, you say, preposterous! How can there ever be too many jams? Our entire supermarket ethos is predicated on the idea that too much is never enough. Just look at the wealth of choices from jams to cereals to pretzels to almost any other product from apple juice to ziplock bags. Well, it turns out that our abundance of choices may not be such a good thing. In fact, it may be a very bad thing. But, first, let’s explore the conundrum of too many jams, which will shed some light on one aspect of our current dating woes, strange as that may sound.
A group of researchers set up a sample table of high-quality jams in a gourmet food store to find out what happens when you present people with choice. Any customer who sampled a jam was given a dollar-off coupon if they bought a jar. Free taste of jam, one dollar off, what could be better? But those clever researchers introduced one variable—the amount of choice on offer. On one day, the researchers set up the table with six varieties of jam for tasting. On another day, they offered twenty-four different jams. The same twenty-four were always available for purchase, regardless of the day, but consumers either had six to sample or a bewildering twenty-four. As you might expect, the vast array of twenty-four samples attracted more customers, although the rest of the tale does not turn out quite how one would imagine. Whether six samples or twenty-four are on offer, people taste about the same number on average. But the shocking part of the study came when the researchers tallied up how many people bought jam. When only six samples were offered, 30 percent of the samplers ended up purchasing a jar. When customer were offered twenty-four samples, though, a paltry 3 percent bought a jar. In other words, in the face of virtually endless choice, consumers locked up. They froze. They failed to make it over the most basic hurdle essential to a consumer society—they didn’t buy anything! Perhaps you think that jams offer some element of complexity that undid the tasters. Some conundrum involving the subtle implications of pectins, say. So, the researchers ran a similar test in the controlled environment of a laboratory with chocolates, and they came up with strikingly similar results.
What’s going on here? The researchers give a number of explanations, but let’s focus on the big picture. Our entire economy is predicated on the idea that more choice is always better, but what these studies show is that more choice is sometimes worse. Give people enough choice, and it makes it difficult for them to make any decision at all. As Barry Schwartz has written in his excellent book on the subject,
The Paradox of Choice
, “At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”
The Paradox of Choice
, “At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”
It doesn’t even take that much choice. You can create difficulties for people with only three alternatives when two of the choices are roughly similar. What if I offered you a dollar and a half for filling out a survey or a pen worth two dollars? When researchers offered students precisely this choice, roughly 75 percent of the participants chose the pen. Then the researchers ran the study again—only this time, participants were offered three choices, one dollar fifty, a nice two-dollar pen, or two less-expensive pens worth two dollars. Any rational analysis of the choice based on the previous study would suggest that at least as high a percentage of students would choose either the two-dollar pen or the two pens. In fact, we might even predict that the number would go up because some students may not like nice pens and would prefer the inexpensive ones. But that isn’t what happened. Instead of sticking with the pens, a majority of students opted for the money. The question is, why? The researchers argue that it was too difficult for most students to choose between the two kinds of pen, so they simply decided to forego that decision and choose the money.
Perhaps choosing a pen is too insubstantial to prove anything definitive about decision making. But what if I told you that professionals, trained for years to make certain kinds of decisions, were flummoxed in exactly the same way as the students? It’s true. A group of doctors had the same difficulty choosing among three alternative medical treatments when two of them were similar and changed their decision in exactly the same “irrational” way.
So what does all this have to do with love? Nothing if you believe in the romantic story line—and everything if you want to look at love through the lens of science. Imagine that you are trying to choose among three potential boyfriends. Two are similar. Let’s say they are both young associates at a law firm who like to play golf on the weekends. The third is a musician who keeps odd hours and promises to write a song about you. In the end, you choose the musician. If you believe the romantic story line, your choice reflected an innate sense that the musician was the right partner for you. If you believe the science, there is a very good chance that you chose the musician to avoid the complexity of choosing between similar alternatives.
This is exactly what I have found in my interviews with men and women. When most of them tried to choose among several people at the same time, they had enormous difficulty. As one of them said to me, “No one is perfect, so you are left trying to compare very different traits.” Not only did these people feel more uncertainty about their choices, they had more difficulty even deciding on what grounds they should choose. A couple of them admitted to being so immobilized that they never made any choice and simply waited for some of the people to fall away until they were left with only one option.
The reason that choice is increasingly becoming not just a consumer problem but a dating problem is that we value quantity as the means of achieving quality, even when it comes to trying to meet someone. You only have to look at the explosion of Internet dating to see how the consumer model of expanding choice is shaping our approach to relationships. Fill out a personality profile, click on a few criteria, and you are suddenly presented with hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities. According to a recent Pew study of online dating, people think that is a good thing, and they use Internet sites because they believe that having lots of choices will lead to a better match. But studies have shown that this increased choice is having exactly the effect that the consumer research would suggest. In one study of online dating, fewer than 1 percent of possible candidates are chosen. One woman admitted to me that, in an effort to cut down on her choices, she developed absurd physical criteria. Another confessed to endless scanning of profiles and said, “With ten thousand page views to go, you feel like you can’t afford not to be choosy.” A man I interviewed dubbed his Internet dating compulsion the “curse of the composite.” Over time, he has developed a vision of his ideal woman based on the various qualities that he likes—only now he has created a composite standard that is impossible to meet. He is thinking of taking a break from Internet dating because he believes it is eroding his ability to commit to a single woman.
And that’s leaving aside the whole issue of deception and Internet dating. If lying is a problem for regular dating, it’s an epidemic for Internet dating. Various studies estimate that between one-fifth and one-third of all online daters are married, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Stories abound of photos that are twenty years out of date or forty pounds lighter. Wall Street bankers who turn out to be Wall Street baristas. One woman has had so many outlandishly terrible experiences using Yahoo Personal Ads that she has rechristened the site “Yahoo Psychos” with even more colorful nicknames for the men themselves. The situation is so bad that some dating sites base their appeal on weeding out the duplicitous and undesirable. The dating site
True.com
even runs criminal checks on its members—although, as far as I know, pretending to be much younger, better looking, and successful than you actually are is not a criminal offense, even though it may feel that way to the other person when he or she finally meets the prevaricator in person.
True.com
even runs criminal checks on its members—although, as far as I know, pretending to be much younger, better looking, and successful than you actually are is not a criminal offense, even though it may feel that way to the other person when he or she finally meets the prevaricator in person.
It’s not just that having too many choices makes choosing more difficult. Having too many choices actually breeds both bad choices and dissatisfaction with the choices that you do make. Let’s look first at how difficult it is for most of us to make good choices. When presented with an array of possibilities, we do what any good consumer has been trained to do. We comparison shop (something that dating on the Internet has made almost compulsory), but it turns out that we are often misled by the comparisons. In one study, volunteers were asked how much they would enjoy eating potato chips. One group was asked this while sitting at a table with a bag of potato chips next to a chocolate bar, while another group was faced with a can of sardines next to the potato chips. As astute students of human nature, you can probably guess what happened next. Volunteers who were looking at the can of sardines predicted that they would enjoy eating the potato chips much more than those looking at the chocolate bar. Even though they weren’t choosing between two alternatives, they couldn’t stop themselves from comparing them. Of course, when the two groups ate the potato chips, the comparison became irrelevant, and both groups enjoyed the chips equally. But comparison had led them astray.
The problem is that in our need to distinguish between different things, we often seize upon some quality that may not have much to do with our ultimate satisfaction—or may not even exist. In another study, shoppers were presented with four pairs of identical panty hose and asked to choose the highest-quality pair. People had no difficulty choosing one identical pair over another (almost no one who participated noticed that they were identical). The biggest influence on their choice? Where the panty hose were placed—40 percent of people preferred the panty hose on the far right.
But the problems with too much choice don’t end once a decision has been made. Too much choice makes us more dissatisfied
whatever we choose.
That’s right. Even if it turns out later that we made the “best” choice, we still find ourselves more unhappy. Why? The problem is that comparing different things makes you aware of the trade-offs, how each choice involves giving up something you might very well like. And we hate the idea that we have to give things up. The irony is that those people who work the hardest to make the right decision—the truly indefatigable bargain hunters out there—end up the most dissatisfied of all, according to surveys, even if they have objectively made the correct decision.
whatever we choose.
That’s right. Even if it turns out later that we made the “best” choice, we still find ourselves more unhappy. Why? The problem is that comparing different things makes you aware of the trade-offs, how each choice involves giving up something you might very well like. And we hate the idea that we have to give things up. The irony is that those people who work the hardest to make the right decision—the truly indefatigable bargain hunters out there—end up the most dissatisfied of all, according to surveys, even if they have objectively made the correct decision.
Once you consider these problems, it can make you rethink your entire relationship history because our romantic choices are subject to the same confusions that we find in any instance when people face numerous choices. Who among us has not at one time or another experienced this romantic version of buyer’s remorse? No matter how excited we are, at some point in the future our feelings about the beloved will fade. The amazing part is not that this occurs time and time again, but that, according to studies ranging from consumer purchases to major life changes, we seem to be unable to remember that it occurs, so we experience the same cycle of excitement and disappointment each and every time. A little like Charlie Brown and the football.
Of course, our romantic mistakes can always be undone these days, which you would think is a good thing. But the very reversibility of our romantic commitments has only worsened our problem because that
also
undermines our satisfaction with our choices. To see this, you only need to look at a study of a group of college students in a photography class. The students made a print of their two best photographs. They were then told that they could choose one of the photos but that the other would be kept on file as an example of their work. Then, the teacher added a twist. One group was told that their choice was final. Whatever they chose, they could not change their minds later. The other group was told that they could switch photographs if they changed their minds. In a survey taken later, students who were allowed to change their mind liked their photos less than the other students. A similar study was done that allowed students the chance to return an art poster that they selected, and researchers found the same results—students who could reverse their decisions ended up liking their posters less. Why this paradoxical result? According to one researcher, the brain has a kind of built-in defense system that works to make us satisfied with choices that cannot be undone. Despite thinking that we would like the freedom to change our minds, it appears that we are happier with our choices if we think they can’t be changed, which means we would be better off if we made romantic commitments more permanent and more difficult to break, rather than less.
also
undermines our satisfaction with our choices. To see this, you only need to look at a study of a group of college students in a photography class. The students made a print of their two best photographs. They were then told that they could choose one of the photos but that the other would be kept on file as an example of their work. Then, the teacher added a twist. One group was told that their choice was final. Whatever they chose, they could not change their minds later. The other group was told that they could switch photographs if they changed their minds. In a survey taken later, students who were allowed to change their mind liked their photos less than the other students. A similar study was done that allowed students the chance to return an art poster that they selected, and researchers found the same results—students who could reverse their decisions ended up liking their posters less. Why this paradoxical result? According to one researcher, the brain has a kind of built-in defense system that works to make us satisfied with choices that cannot be undone. Despite thinking that we would like the freedom to change our minds, it appears that we are happier with our choices if we think they can’t be changed, which means we would be better off if we made romantic commitments more permanent and more difficult to break, rather than less.
Think this doesn’t apply to relationships? Let’s take a quick look at a popular relationship choice that comes with its own opt-out clause: cohabitation. As numerous studies have found, couples that live together are less likely to get married. But the effect of cohabitation doesn’t stop there. Even if the couples do marry, they have an increased chance of divorce because it appears that living together weakens people’s commitment to marriage. This is a rather startling statistic when you consider that more than half of serious couples live together as a kind of pre-marriage trial. And if you pair it with the consumer research, you come to a rather shocking conclusion: the ability to change our minds romantically (which doesn’t stop at the altar anymore) is almost certainly hurting our relationships. I’m not arguing that people should stay in unhappy marriages, but I am saying that the ease with which we can leave a marriage is contributing to our unhappiness. It’s no surprise that the rise of divorce has occurred at the same time that marriage—at least in rhetorical terms—has gradually been stripped of all of its practical roles until a choice of life partner has been reduced to one single criteria: personal fulfillment. This is the same criteria that dominates our consumer choices, so we tend to treat it like a consumer choice as well and endlessly scan the horizon wondering if someone better is going to come along.
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