Chapter 3

Preference: The (Un)Conscious Filter of (In)Finite Choice

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

Ayn Rand, author

Elliott was a 30-something successful man with a wife and children when he encountered what many would consider their worst nightmare—a tumor: more specifically, a brain tumor. But Elliott’s case did not end in the premature death of a vibrant young man, at least not in the physical sense. Doctors were able to remove the benign tumor from the prefrontal cortex of his brain, and, by all indications of post-operative tests that followed, Elliott was back to “normal.” Doctors found minimal impact on his neurological and psychological function. The location of the tumor meant that Elliot’s language and motor skills were unaffected. He scored at or above average levels in numerous tests, over and over again. Yet, despite the negligible impact on his cognitive skills, it soon became apparent that something did die with that tumor. This was not the same Elliott.

Although Elliott retained his short- and long-term memory, his expertise and knowledge base, and his ability to analyze data in great detail, he could no longer hold a job because he couldn’t prioritize his work, manage his time, or complete needed tasks. Without steady employment, he entered into several foolish business ventures, losing his life savings in dealings with disreputable people. Soon he was divorced and then remarried to a woman that his family warned him against. Then he was divorced again. Although he was still an intelligent, knowledgeable, and capable person, Elliot was jobless and dependent on friends, family, and disability payments, which were about to be stopped because, by all medical accounts, he was fine. After yet another round of psychological testing, he was referred to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, expert on the interdependency of mind and brain, mind and body, and the evolutionary purposes served by the mind and our emotions.

Damasio conducted another battery of tests designed to identify known problems in Elliot’s processes of decision making and moral judgment. Many of the tests involved remembering and manipulating numbers, images, objects, and concepts in a variety of scenarios designed to simulate real life. For example, he was given a task to develop alternative choices in social situations and list the positives and negatives of each, explaining why each had certain likely outcomes. Elliot performed extremely well, but at the end of the task said, “And after all this, I still don’t know what to do!”

This response and other observations throughout the examination led Damasio to determine that Elliot’s issue wasn’t that he couldn’t reason or that he didn’t have a grasp of social conventions or societal principles. His problems began at the end of the reasoning process when it came to closing the deal and making a choice. In addition, some of the tasks that he could talk through and decide on in a laboratory setting, he couldn’t do successfully in real life, as his track record showed. Something was inhibiting his ability to prioritize the values of his options and act accordingly. So what was different about Elliot in the real world?

More often than not, real life faces us with a greater mix of pictorial and linguistic material. We are confronted with people and objects; with sights, sounds, smells, and so on; with scenes of varying intensities; and with whatever narratives, verbal and or pictorial, we create to accompany them.1

Elliot was overwhelmed by the volume of choices, which, ironically, his intellect helped him to be beyond proficient at devising. Plus, in the real world, once he had assessed a situation and arrived at a response to his environment, the environment presented him with new data. Imagine you are in a discussion with someone. The conversation isn’t over just because the other person says “A” and then you say “B.” Saying “B” elicits another response from the person with further considerations, further input, and perhaps new conditions and goals for decision making. In a laboratory, the experiments occur within a fixed amount of time. In real life, the iterative process can go on and on.

Observation of Elliot’s behavior yielded another clue about what was wrong. All the time that the doctor and patient were discussing this dilemma, Elliot remained dispassionate, calm, and relaxed. At times, Damasio notes, he the doctor became more emotionally disturbed and frustrated than the patient. Therefore, Damasio had a colleague conduct another test, showing Elliot a series of emotionally charged images, such as cities damaged by earthquakes, houses burning, and people being injured in gory accidents or near drowning. Although pre-tumor Elliot would have been upset, post-tumor Elliot had no emotional response—positive or negative. The location of the tumor and the resulting surgical damage were in one of many sectors of the brain linked to emotional processes. Damasio concluded:

[T]he cold-bloodedness made his mental landscape hopelessly flat. It might also be that the same cold-bloodedness made his mental landscape too shifty and unsustained for the time required to make response selections, in other words, a subtle rather than basic defect in working memory which might alter the remainder of the reasoning process required for a decision to emerge.2

Elliot’s case highlights two key areas of decision making that are important to our discussion of the formation and execution of preferences. First, the heart of the process involves the ability to sift through options, organize them, and attach value. Second, how we as humans do that is a complex brain process that relies not only on reason and thinking, but also to a substantial degree on emotion and feeling. We have a dual-process method of knowing and information processing, and emotions are essential to the assignment of value and prioritization, which are needed to make final decisions.

Why is this? For Damasio and many other scientists and doctors who view our mental processes through the lens of evolutionary biology, the mind exists because its processes help regulate and preserve our lives. Some of those life-regulating functions are completely automatic: one’s heart beating, breathing, balancing biochemistry. If we had to make an active, deliberate decision on those basic life-regulating functions, we’d never survive. Our brains are structured to exchange messages with the body to moderate a host of operations and maintain homeostasis without intervention of a conscious mental supervisor. Our conscious supervisor is the director in our mind who deliberately recalls images, makes observations via our senses, and pulls all the information together to make a plan of action in what appears to be a logical fashion.

Other life-regulating operations require the supervisor’s active decision making. Some are still more basic and primal: Back away from the mountain lion and map a path of escape to avoid being its dinner. However, some are more subtle as our sense of homeostasis becomes more sophisticated, because human lives and choices are more complex: Eat healthy to keep the mind and body in top working order and avoid disease. Or, in Elliot’s case: Give weight to the forewarnings of caring friends and relatives. Avoid investing your money with questionable business partners. Don’t marry a problematic spouse if you want peace. Underlying these conscious decisions are still unconscious drives pushing us to act in favor of our survival—saving our lives directly, creating advantageous conditions, or reducing the influence of potentially harmful ones. Our experience of those drives is through feeling states in the body and emotional states in the mind, which are often linked together.

In any case, we have developed ways to make life-regulating decisions more efficiently by automating all or part of the process. Emotions are mental processing shortcuts that arise from assessing the environment and mapping connections in our mental log of experiences and information. Some assessments are conscious and some unconscious. As we move through life and obtain more experiences, our minds map more and more shortcuts to help us, moving greater portions of some decision making down the continuum from conscious to unconscious, from deliberate to automatic. These elements and more form a working network in which you make your decision—consciously, unconsciously, or somewhere in between. Your auto-piloted, homeward-bound route is a well-worn groove that has become the path of least resistance to homeostasis and life regulation—your sense of normality. Psychologists have outlined the role that routines play in what they call the “theory of preference.”3 Within this framework, a person is confronted with a “decision problem.” The mind’s first response is to look for a shortcut, a routine—a quickly executable pattern of mental and physical processes that can serve as a solution. In evaluating which routine to follow, a person considers both cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) components—matching the current situation with situations he has experienced or heard about in the past. Our preferences are our personalized set of go-to routines. Although the virtual world opens the doors to a seemingly infinite set of choices previously unavailable to us, technology also creates new shortcuts that enable our navigation of these decisions, assuming that those shortcuts are valid and reliable. To make these virtual shortcuts more relevant, consumers are willing to share information about themselves. In our study, nearly 70 percent agree that they are very or somewhat comfortable sharing information online if it helps them find items of interest. Consider the viewpoint expressed by Christine, one of our ethnography respondents, as she reflects on how technology allows her to wade through a sea of choices and discover new information or content:

I enjoy the easy access—like things at my fingertips. The looking things up to get answers on the spot. Or having the dictionary in the palm of my hands when I want a thesaurus. Or the convenience of when you’re on iPhoto, you just hit the Facebook [icon], and it’ll export the whole thing. The interconnectedness of how life meets technology and how you can surround yourself with things that make that blend very easy and opportune.

The Power of Experience

As we go about our lives building a working network of routines, we integrate them with a corresponding web of emotional associations. These associations help us evaluate the environment and context of a decision and choose the optimal routine. These are whispers of emotion that psychologists call affect and describe as the “goodness” or “badness” that we experience as a feeling to indicate the positive or negative quality of a given stimulus or choice.4 Feelings create a strong tie into your intuitive, more instinctual responses and are more easily mapped to your mental routines and information-processing shortcuts. “Goodness” and “badness” are evaluated in the context of survival—again, escaping immediate life threats, creating advantageous conditions, and mitigating negative ones.

Consider the difference between having direct versus indirect experience—either positive or negative. Direct experience yields stronger associations because the affective association is made directly from the emotion you personally experienced: for example, the pleasure of enjoying a meal at a restaurant or, conversely, the anxiety felt when arguing with the manager over an incorrect bill. The resulting association of “good” or “bad” with that particular restaurant will always be stronger. At the mention of that restaurant in the future, your mind will reconnect with a feeling tied to “Mmmm, the food was fantastic!” or “Oh, my gosh, the service was bad.” These thoughts may not even be consciously expressed. This connection is more than just a rational filing away of facts to be weighed regarding your meal. You could read a survey in which 1,000 people conclude the opposite of your experience. When someone mentions the restaurant, you’ll always remember the taste of the chocolate mousse you loved (pleasure) or the constriction in your chest as you confronted the manager over the bill (pain).

You remember the feelings and associated emotions. Affective reasoning based on experience is powerful. Even if considering the experiences of others, you are more likely to contemplate the opinions and experiences of someone with whom you have an emotional connection. Depending on the intensity of the experience and the closeness of the relationship to the person affected, you may take on their associations as your own. We discuss this further in our chapter on the “Law of Recall.”

For respondents in our study, personal experience goes a long way in determining loyalty (or lack thereof) to service providers vying for sustained customer relationships. In fact, according to our study, providing extraordinary customer service is the attribute most correlated with trusting a provider, whereas offering personalized products and services to meet the consumer’s unique needs is a close second. As Brian, a 20-something recent college graduate, considers the relationships he has with various companies, he provides a glowing endorsement for his mobile provider.

I’ve had no problems with them [the mobile operator]. Which is surprising, because I’ve heard horror stories about other mobile carriers. I love my provider. They have service everywhere I go—whether it be in a tunnel or in an elevator. They always seem to have service. Plus, there aren’t a lot of hidden charges.

Reflect on Brian’s choice of words to hear the emotion that binds him to his provider. He “loves” them. In fact, he is “surprised” at his own enthusiasm given the “horror” stories he has personally heard from others about their own experiences with other operators. It is both his direct experience with his provider and the close association with others who have experienced quite the opposite that serve as powerful emotional connectors solidifying Brian’s loyalty.

Service providers connect us to the virtual world that has become so essential in our daily lives. In addition, that virtual world has taught us that unlimited choice and customization are possible, albeit overwhelming, pursuits in an online domain where shelf space comes cheap. No longer are consumers relegated to popular fare within a restricted local area. No longer are they confined to content on a particular timetable dictated by television programming schedules or box office show times. Time and again, we heard consumers express gratitude (as in Christine’s case) for the “fingertip access” common in a networked-community age. However, what is appreciated by some becomes an expectation for others. Although service providers are indispensable in connecting consumers to the online world they crave, consumer expectations are now shifting to require that these same providers deliver customizable options themselves.

In the case of Brian, he “loves” his mobile operator but calls his cable provider “persnickety.” Why? As Brian’s roommate explains:

I think the problem with most places [providers] is they don’t give you a plan that just fits your needs. Why not come up with a plan for college students? If you’re in college, you’re going to be going from place to place year by year. Why do we need to pay for a setup fee and all these charges and try to figure out the best plan when they should just have certain plans for certain people?

This direct experience of being frustrated (or at a minimum, confused) with what appear to be onerous charges creates a perception that the company in question is unwilling to adapt to its consumers’ unique needs. Of course, in a physical world, there are tangible costs associated with turning up services, for example, a cable operator who must dispatch a technician to install service. However, becoming accustomed to an Internet experience where “unlimited” choice is remotely achievable, consumers come to expect the same level of customization for other services in their lives—no matter the difference in economics that persists between the physical and virtual worlds. This increasing level of expectation may be partly to blame for the growing incidence of video cord cutters—those consumers who forego paid television services entirely or in part in favor of online options offered by Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and others. In our study, approximately eight percent of network-engaged consumers have canceled their paid television subscription in the past two years; another 23 percent have cut back.

Are You Paying Attention?

Advertising has been the domain of creative geniuses. So much so, in fact, that those in the field work tirelessly to break through the clutter that surrounds consumers each day. Their industry rewards achievers for attaining the goal—both in dollars and recognition. The Clios, advertising’s nod to creative professionals in the field, have long been the benchmark for measuring excellence, even marked by an annual awards ceremony. Although the Clio is deeply coveted among several advertisers as validation of their work, it seems that there is more to the Clio than just pomp and circumstance. Indeed, evidence suggests that creative ads are more successful in capturing the elusive attention of consumers in an increasingly cluttered market.5

Advertising has made big business of capturing and keeping consumers’ attention and helping create consumer preferences for client brands. In the days marked by print, radio, television, direct mail, and every other form of media in the “real” world, the way to ensure doing so meant creating the memorable. The Clios became one way of distinguishing the ordinary from extraordinary among advertising agencies. They also helped winners command a premium for their creative work among desperate clients looking to break through the proverbial clutter.

In the “real” world, clients are left with few choices to make an impression. They can hire an agency with a reputation for creating the memorable, select outrageously expensive media events (such as the Super Bowl) where air time is the scarce resource, or tirelessly endeavor to optimize messages and media with garden-variety tactics. This conundrum led many companies to engage in desperate “spray-and-pray” approaches, so termed because clients would “spray” their messages across multiple media formats and then “pray” that something actually worked. It also led to the most oft-quoted statements in advertising to express the natural frustration that followed. In the late nineteenth century, John Wanamaker, a department store mogul, quipped that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but that he didn’t know which half.6

The online world changes the paradigm. Click-through rates can be tracked. Even if they don’t get your money, advertisers are assured they’ve at least grabbed your attention—and they can measure how effective specific ads on targeted sites are at doing so. But there’s a problem with Internet advertising. It’s become so commonplace that many consumers have learned to tune out obnoxious banner advertisements or block annoying pop-ups all together. In addition, given that some with nefarious intentions have exploited banner advertisements and pop-ups to infect devices with malware, consumers are guarded in just how carefree they can afford to be when one click can lead to unintended consequences. In the words of Bruce, a 22-year-old subject in our study:

I never get pop-ups on my computer. Banner ads? Every once in a while I may click on one to see what’s going on.… But I’m more cautious as to what I do click on because I hate dealing with issues with the computer. It’s frustrating.

So, what’s an advertiser to do in a world where traditional media like television, radio, and print are difficult to measure and new media like the Internet are experiencing clutter and other nuisances of their own? Many are turning to targeted advertising as the new darling to outperform even the most creative of advertisements. Of course, targeting is nothing new to advertisers. For decades, advertisers have targeted where to run advertisements in the media that serves a coveted demographic, such as within popular primetime shows that cater to a particular cohort. However, there’s still a bit of “spraying and praying” in the approach, in that advertisers are relying on generalizations to target the message. For example, an ad on the Disney Channel deliberately directed at moms (the demographic most represented in the audience) ignores stay-at-home dads, who may feel excluded, if not offended, because they are not represented. When advertisers have but one spot to run in a particular time slot, they must play to the averages—and the averages ignore critical niches that surround the edges.

The virtual world changes the economics of advertising, just as it changes those of physical goods. If creativity is the idol of traditional media, revered by advertising executives in glamorous awards ceremonies, targeting is the differentiator of new media that just may finally answer which part of the advertising budget is wasted. Although pop-up ads never reach Bruce’s radar and banner ads are met with caution, he offers an interesting observation for other types of ads he notices, and they just so happen to be targeted to his interests:

I do notice ads on Facebook every once in a while on the right hand side. You can tell that they know what you’re surfing for or what you’ve been surfing for. I was looking for stuff for my motorcycle and then there’s an ad on Facebook about motorcycles.

In a virtual world, our clicks are tracked, and our time spent on sites is measurable. Eventually, what we search for, where we visit, and how long we stay represent a collage of behaviors that begins to define us as a human being—not some generic demographic cohort. In some cases, we actively raise our virtual hand to indicate our preferences such that technology can do the work for us in discovering the content tuned to our needs. Brian, our recent college graduate, extols the virtues of Pandora, an online streaming music service, in filtering his preferences:

Pandora gives you a music choice tailored to a specific song. So say it’s Def Leppard.… It will select songs for the next 3–4 hours that are similar to those music qualities.

In this case, Brian knows that Pandora is aware of his preferences, because he has actively raised his virtual hand as a fan of Def Leppard to receive music tailored as such. However, as we covered in Chapter 2 on protection, consumers also leave behind a visible trail of footsteps in a virtual world—whether or not they voluntarily choose to do so. The sensitivities to this reality are palpable among some respondents as they ominously foretell an Orwellian existence. As Todd, another of our 20-somethings, laments while visiting his favorite search engine:

The only thing I see on here [at the search engine portal] is just stuff for searching on different things. In a way, I feel like there should be something on the page that is going to let me know that what I’m searching for—that no one is watching over, like a Big Brother type of a thing that’s watching everything that I do. You’d like to know that you’re secure.…

If security is not the prime concern, there are less lofty ambitions online consumers ask of companies—like just knowing who they are in the first place. Indeed, in a virtual world where targeting is expected, if not feared, there is more frustration when the invisible filters just get it wrong. Andrew, a viewer of online video sites like Hulu, relays his experience:

Hulu is free. It’s ad-supported. [The ads] are annoying. A lot of them are for cat food, which has always been very distressing to me. I don’t know what in my profile makes them think that cats are my thing but [shakes his head]. It doesn’t matter how many times I click thumbs-down to indicate the ad is not relevant to me, just more cat food keeps coming.

Consumers are aware of the tracking capabilities in a virtual world. In our study, 80 percent indicate their belief that notable technology players track personal preferences across a variety of network activities. Yet, here’s the fascinating part: The knowledge of being tracked, and in some cases of being victimized by fraudulent companies, does not deter consumers from jumping, head first, into the virtual swimming pool. Despite no change in behavior, there is a definite difference in trust. In our study, brands that are seen as being more trustworthy in protecting one’s sensitive information are also those more likely to command a premium for a tested service, all else being equal. Also, in a world where shelf space comes cheap, trust certainly does not.

That brings us back to Elliott. In his case, the mind–body filters to affect reasoning and choice misfired. He was unable to assess risks accurately. He could no longer feel the difference between right and wrong. He could not pull the trigger when it came to making a choice. In a world unconstrained by physical boundaries and overwhelmed by choices, our own natural mind–body filters are faulty. We must rely on technology to do the work for us. We must trust in companies to know us without exploiting us. Although our cognitive filters may be insufficient, our affective reasoning is not. Companies that connect positively with us, show that they understand us, and respond to us are preferred. Companies that are not able to walk the line between trust and exploitation will find themselves just as commoditized as the endless virtual shelf space that surrounds them.