by Dan Ariely
Family, Procrastination, Morality
ON LUCK AS A MULTIPLE-STAGE NUMBER GAME
Dear Dan,
Are there people who are just lucky? I think so. Only I’m not one of them.
—AMY
Some people are indeed luckier, but it’s not the kind of luck that gets you more money at the roulette wheel. Luckier people tend to try different things more frequently, and by trying more often they also succeed more. As an example, think about a basketball player who only shoots when he is 100 percent certain that he will make the shot. With this strategy he shoots three times in a game with perfect accuracy (3 baskets, and 100 percent success rate). Now, compare this to a player that tries 30 times but with a 50 percent success rate. With this strategy the second player will have 15 baskets and many more points.
On top of that, life is different from basketball in some very important ways. In basketball, every outcome is binary. A shot is either in or out. But in life, decisions often involve multiple stages and we can decide to try something and see where it goes. For example, we can start studying something new (go on a date, try a new food, interview for a new job, etc.), see if it fits our interests and skills—and only then decide whether to go deeper into the topic. This means that luckier people don’t just try more things to start with; they are also quicker at cutting off the paths that don’t seem to work out and focus on the more promising avenues.
So, what’s the advice? First, life, to some degree, is a numbers game so try more things more frequently. Second, keep on examining all the options you have, and quickly cut the less promising ones in order to free more time for exploring options that might be better for you.
Luck, Experimenting, Decisions
ON SOCKS AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUPERNATURAL
Dear Dan,
Why do socks always get lost in the laundry?
—JAMIE
Some time ago Ornit Raz and I looked into this fascinating question and discovered that otherwise reasonable people, who view themselves as having a strong grasp of the forces of nature, find themselves at a loss when it comes to this universal puzzle. The socks mystery often shakes people’s faith in the laws of physics, and pushes even the skeptics to start believing in the supernatural.
We also found one psychological mechanism that can help us understand this mystery. The overcounting of missing socks. Most of us have many socks, and if we see one of them and don’t immediately find its partner, we say, “Oh! A sock has been lost!” We remember that a sock is missing, but don’t recall exactly its type or color. Later on, we see the matching sock, but we don’t remember that it is the one who could form the pair with the first sock, so we say to ourselves, “Another sock is missing. Where is its partner? I can’t believe so many socks go missing.”
At the end of the day, the socks mystery is not due to the suspension of the law of physics. It stems from a much larger puzzle of how our memory works (or doesn’t work).
At the same time, even with this scientific explanation, I still feel that at the back of my washing machine, there must be a black hole that is suitable just for socks.
Attention, Memory, Mistakes
ON TITHING
“I’m in the market for an easier religion.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
Should Jews tithe?
—O.
Super-simple answer: Of course! Everyone should.
And obviously the best way to donate your money is by giving it to university professors so that they can continue with their important and illuminating research.
More seriously, giving money away is one of the most misunderstood human activities. We often think that if we have some money, the best way to use it is to spend it on ourselves. But there is a lot of research showing that giving money away leads to higher levels of happiness than spending it on ourselves. Of course, I am not recommending giving away all your money, but somewhere in the vicinity of tithing is a useful guideline for increased life satisfaction and happiness.
In addition to the general benefits of giving, specific rules such as tithing are very useful because they are strict and clear. When we have fuzzy and ill-defined rules (I will eat better, spend more time with my kids, drink less) it is easy not to think carefully about our behavior and about whether we are sticking to our declared goals or not. Unclear rules let us rationalize our misbehavior while keeping the hope that we will behave better in the future. In contrast, rules that are clear and strict (I will cut out desserts, read to the kids every night for thirty minutes, have only two glasses of wine per week) keep us from fooling ourselves and increase the chance that we will behave in accordance with our long-term best interest.
Tithing also helps in another important way. It changes our mindset from how much to give to where to give. When we tithe, the overall amount we give is a function of our income, and the amount is out of our hands (although I am never sure if tithing should be calculated before or after tax). Since the amount is set, we only have to decide where we want to have an impact. This makes giving feel a bit like giving away someone else’s money—which is much more fun and rewarding.
Go forth and tithe.
Rules, Giving, Happiness
ON MIDLIFE CLICHÉS
“I’ve had those books for years. They represent the person I once aspired to be.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
I am a middle-aged guy who’s doing OK financially, and I’m thinking about buying myself a sports car. Perhaps a Porsche 911. But I’m also a bit disturbed by the obvious midlife cliché. What would you do?
—CRAIG
Tesla designs cars for people with your exact conflict. The Tesla is a sports car, but it has an environmental image and those who buy it can think of themselves as green, not gray.
Self-image, Cars, Aging
ON CHEATERS AND ALIBIS
Dear Dan,
I recently stumbled upon a website offering customers help with creating alibis. It even manufactures corroborating “evidence” for their absences (for example, it reassures your wife that you were at a conference when you were really with your mistress). Other sites offer married people help finding paramours for extramarital affairs. Do you think these sites are increasing dishonesty?
—JOE
Thanks for your question. In addition to being interesting, it also led me to explore some of these websites myself. And the basic answer to your question is “Yes.” I think that these websites do increase dishonesty.
As far as I can tell, many of these websites are constructed to look as similar as possible to websites of more mandarin types of services. In one case, I saw a website featuring pictures of smiling people wearing headsets, waiting to fill an order for services ranging from producing and sending fake airline tickets, to impersonating hotel reception. The testimonials on another website were very positive and very general, and yet another website included the slogan “Empowering Real People in a Real World!” which could be downright uplifting, until you realize that when they say “empowering” people, they mean lying on their behalf.
I suspect that this type of phrasing and suggested commonality help people to rationalize their actions as socially acceptable. And with all the testimonials from so many regular people, why not you?
I also think that the “real world” rhetoric may further lull people’s objections by promoting the idea that this is how things truly work in the real world as opposed to the fairy-tale land of perfect honesty that some people pretend to be part of.
For my part, I’m left feeling a little worried about what kinds of ads might pop up in my browser after looking at all of these websites.
Relationships, Honesty, Technology
ON BREAKFAST REGRETS
Dear Dan,
I often buy a breakfast sandwich from my regular café. Sometimes, I take the empty paper wrapper, walk five meters to the trash bin, di
spose of the wrapper, and walk back to my seat—a perfectly convenient sequence of events. But at other times, without getting up from my seat I try to throw the wrapper into the trash. I am a lousy shot, and when I (inevitably) miss, I have to make the same journey back to the bin, pick up the wrapper, and place it in the trash bin. The trip is the same in both cases, but walking to the trash bin after I have missed feels much more like a chore.
Why do I feel so differently about the same journey?
—RICHARD
The answer to your question lies in the realm of counterfactuals, which is thinking about what could have been and comparing what we have at hand to that alternate reality. Here is how counterfactuals translate into your daily drama: When you aim and miss, you can clearly imagine a world in which you sank your shot. You judge your efforts by comparison to that imagined world, and, in relative terms, you feel bad about it. But when you don’t even try to make the shot, there is no other world to imagine and no contrast to make you feel bad.
My suggestion: Buy your sandwich and order your coffee, but ask the café to make you the coffee three minutes later. Go to your table, sit with your sandwich, and try to shoot the wrapper into the trash can. Now, no matter how successful you are, get up and walk to the counter to get your coffee. If you made the basket, great; if not, pick up the wrapper on your way to get your coffee. This way there is no world in which you didn’t have to get up after your shot, no counterfactuals, and no comparison to make you feel bad. Happy breakfast.
Regret, Emotions, Food and Drinks
ON NIGHTTIME ACTIVITIES
“If only we could stay home and TiVo the Carlsons.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
My husband and I are childless. We’ve lived in the same house in the same town for seventeen years. Each day my husband comes home and says, “What do you want to do tonight?” By now we’ve tried every restaurant in a five-mile radius so often that we almost know the menus by heart. Neither of us enjoys shopping or watching movies at a theater. His hobby is aviation, and I have an aversion to flying. I work from home and would love to go out in the evening occasionally, but we usually end up just staying at home and watching TV. And we don’t even like TV! Can you shed some light on this problem and suggest how we can get out of this rut?
—CHARLEEN
The basic challenge you are facing is what economists call a problem of coordination. Every night you and your husband look for an activity that you can agree on and that both of you will enjoy. This is no easy task when your preferences for the ideal activity don’t align. On top of that, you have the suboptimal default option of watching TV—something that neither of you enjoys but is a simple solution to your coordination problem, and something you can easily fall back on whenever you can’t reach a better solution.
One approach to your conundrum is to switch it from a simultaneous coordination problem to a sequential one. For this approach you will need to agree up front on a plan that will make only one of you happy on any given night but, ultimately, will let both of you experience activities that you enjoy to a larger degree. Here are some practical steps you can take in order to set up this sequential coordination: Using some cards, write down activities that you want to engage in, and ask your husband to do the same using the same number of cards. Mix the cards and every evening when you don’t know what to do, draw one card to pick that night’s activity. You also have to commit in advance that when these cards are drawn you will follow up with the named activity. You can easily see how using this approach would make one of you very happy (the person whose activity was chosen) and it should also lead to higher overall enjoyment. After all, it’s better to have a high level of enjoyment on some nights of the week than to have no joy every night.
And one final suggestion: Add a few wild cards to the mix (singing, poetry, pottery, volunteering, square dancing, etc.)—activities that you aren’t sure if either of you would like. If you follow this strategy, some nights will end up being an unpleasant learning experience—giving you new insights into the extent to which you dislike these activities—but there might be some evenings where you will be surprised to find some new activities that you both truly enjoy.
Relationships, Coordination, Experiences
ON PLAYING PARENTS
“We planned on having you but you’re not the children we planned on having.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
My wife and I are in our late thirties, and we are debating whether or not to have kids. Any advice?
—HENRY
The decision on whether or not to have kids is very complex. It depends on many factors, including your financial situation, your preferences, and the quality and stability of your relationship. So, sadly, without knowing much more about your situation I can’t provide a direct answer to your question.
At the same time, given that this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make, I feel some obligation to point out some general lessons that apply to large and substantial decisions.
Like many other decisions, here too the question is all about what you might get from this experience and what you might have to give up. The problem is that before you have kids, it is hard to estimate both the costs and the benefits. So what should you do? You need to try to simulate the kid-having experience in order to have a better understanding of what it means and how it would fit your preferences and life.
To get more insight into this question, why don’t you, for example, move in for a week with some of your friends who have kids and observe them up close? Next, why don’t you offer to take care of some other friends’ kids for a week? Then try to expand this exercise and take care of kids from different age groups (don’t skip very young kids and teenagers). After ten weeks of these types of experiments, you should be in a much better position to figure out if this particular activity is right for you or not.
If this exercise seems too daunting for you, you probably fall into one of two categories: 1) You’re not really that interested in an empirical answer to this question. Perhaps you’ve already made up your mind and it is just that you’re not yet ready to admit it. 2) You’re too lazy to put the effort into figuring this out. And if that is the case, you probably should not have kids.
Experimenting, Family, Happiness
ON JOINT ACCOUNTS
“You should try taking more naps yourself. Sleep is free.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
I recently got married, and my wife and I have been debating the topic of bank accounts. She’d like to combine our bank accounts, because she wants to know how much is coming in and going out. I think separate accounts would be simpler for taxes, personal spending, and budgeting. What’s your take?
—JONATHAN
The fact that you’re wondering whether to follow your own or your wife’s ideas on what is the best way to run your household tells me that you are either a slow learner or very recently married (sorry, my Jewish heritage would not let me pass up this opportunity). But to your question: I think you should have a joint account.
First, there’s no question that in reality your accounts are joint in the sense that anything one of you does has a direct effect on your mutual financial future. For example, if one of you starts buying expensive cars from your individual account, there’s going to be less money for both of you to spend later on vacations, medical bills, and so on.
Beyond the legal point and most important for the whole marriage enterprise is the fact that by getting married you have created a social contract in the form of “I will take care of you, and you will take care of me.” The mutuality of this agreement is a crucial key to the success of any marriage, and adding a layer of financial negotiations to this intricate relationship can easily backfire.
For example, think about what would happen if there were “my money” and “your money
.” Would you start splitting the bill in restaurants? What if one of you has an extra glass of wine? And what if your wife runs out of “her money”? Would you tell her that if she does the dishes and takes the garbage out for a week, you will give her some of “your money”?
The problem is that once money becomes intertwined in deep social relationships, the relationship in question can start looking a bit more like prostitution than love, romance, and long-term caring. Separate bank accounts will certainly have some financial advantages, but separate accounts could also put unnecessary stress on your relationship and I hope it’s clear to you that sacrificing some efficiency for the sake of a good relationship is a worthwhile tradeoff.
Relationships, Money, Social Norms
ON THE BORDEAUX BATTLEFIELD
“I’ll give you a few moments to recover from the prices.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
I love dining out, including having some wine with dinner—but the truth is that I can’t tell much difference between different bottles, and I never know which wine to order or how much to spend. When I ask waiters or sommeliers for advice, they often give some flowery descriptions about soil and accents of apricot, but these never help me figure out which wine pairs best with my meal. The whole wine-ordering business makes me feel incompetent and inadequate. Do you have any simple advice for how to order wine?
