Are you a glass half full or half empty kind of person?
I’m gonna go ahead and guess half full, especially if you’re a chimp.
Hey everyone Julia here for DNews.
Have you ever scrolled through a streaming website site, searching for the perfect movie
and just can’t choose?
Do you just give up?
You’re not alone- too many options seems overwhelming to us.
A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology over ten years ago put
this idea to the test.
You might know it as the famous “Paradox of Choice” study.
Researchers set up two situations.
One in which people chose from 6 varieties of jam and the other from 24.
The larger display got more attention, but only a tenth of the amount of purchases.
The researchers conclude that too many options turned off shoppers.
The cost of making a decision grows with each new option.
With more choice comes more anxiety and regret.
What if I make the wrong choice?
They felt too overwhelmed.
So in a world full of too many choices, how do retailers get you to choose their option?
Manipulation…
I mean marketing.
By framing one option that’s relatively equal to all the others in a positive light,
we’re more likely to just go with it.
Maybe just to make the anxiety STOP.
Research shows that presenting the same information in a positive frame yields better results
than negatively framing it.
And it seems there’s not much you can do about your susceptibility to it.
It might be in your DNA.
All things being equal people prefer a hopeful spin.
We like to think of our glasses as half full.
This is called “framing”.
Humans above and beyond positive framing.
They will choose the 75% lean steak rather than the 25% fat one.
Even though they’re exactly the same.
Researchers used to think this was a result of human culture, something to do with our
society.
But it turns our nearest primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos like to look on the
bright side too.
Researchers framed food options for both our nearest relatives, bonobos and chimps.
To “frame” in chimp language, they gave them the option to chose a handful of nuts
or fruit.
In one trial the researchers framed the fruit option positively by showing a smaller handful
but sometimes giving an extra piece.
In another trial, the fruit was framed negatively, sometimes they were shown a larger handful
but then actually received less.
The chips had a preference for the option framed as a prize, rather than an option framed
as a penalty, even when both options were pretty much equal.
The researchers say this suggests that a positive framing bias has more basis in our DNA than
in our culture.
So with that in mind, we’ve got 2 videos down here (point) for you to watch.
This one is okay, but you’re going to be blown away by this one.
You should click it.
Go on, click it.
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