Predictably irrational, Chp 13

This is the final chapter in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational.  Here's a question: have you ever had the situation at a restaurant where you had decided what you wanted to order, but when your friend ordered ahead of you, she ordered what you wanted?  What did you do?  Did you go ahead and order it anyway or did you change your mind last minute?  According to Ariely in another one of his behavioral economics experiments, most people will change their minds and order something else if someone orders their first choice ahead of them.

Why?  According to Ariely, we place such a high value on the uniqueness of the individual in our culture, that people are much more likely to sacrifice the pleasure they might recieve from consumable goods in order to project an image of uniqueness.  So we change our food orders, buy the other dress, get the car in the other color than maybe the one we really want. And that's the big point. Ariely found that when a person orders their food outloud in a sequential order, they are less likely to enjoy the thing they ordered.  Obviously, the first choice was the best, and when they had to switch, they only got second best.

So here's what I'm thinking-- How often does the creeping desire to be "unique" invade my decision making so that I'm not making the right choices.  I think about all of the teenagers and College Students who had their "rebellious years."  Were those a result of well reasoned choices or the desire to project an image?  Even religious choices that people make-- I heard an interview with Jessica Alba once where she talked about her rebellious teen years.  She said she rebelled against her liberal Hippy parents when she was  in High School by becoming a born-again Christian, saying no to drugs and abstaining from sex . . . at least for a few months.  But I think that's the power of the image of individuality where we might make irrational choices out of a desire to avoid conformity.  Even in church history, how many movements, church splits, new denominations, new theologies can we say purely resulted from better exegesis, better doctrinal clarity, etc.?  I'd say we have to admit that many of these new ideas and movements, even in the church, were at least partially a result of the desire to project a different image of Christianity or maybe Jesus in a unique way.  The question is, is unique, different, individualistic, always better?  I guess we should at least pause in our decisions before we bandwagon new movements in the church without careful examination.       

Comments

[Dan Ariely]

I am sad this is the last chapter -- I enjoyed reading your summary and take-aways.

Irrationally yours

Dan