Collectable experiences are defined as unique, unusual, novel, or extreme experiences. Instead of viewing the Super Bowl blackout of 2013 as a frustrating experience, view it as a “collectable experience” and you will enjoy it more.

That’s what researchers did one New Years Eve in Times Square with a similarly frustrating event. Spectators were increasingly nervous about the oncoming snow. However, when the researchers reframed the night as “the first New Years Eve snow in recent history,” spectators enjoyed the event much more as they became part of a unique story—a collectable experience.

We all want to be part of stories and to collect experiences to tell stories about. Some of us want this more than others (known as people high in productivity orientation), but all of us are looking to some degree to build our experiential resumes full of unique and fascinating experiences (e.g. staying in Ice-Hotels, going to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, eating at a weird restaurant).

Last night, millions of Americans collected an experience. An experience that other generations did not have and will not have. This blackout was a good thing, especially if we can get ourselves to think of it as a good thing. For happiness is often found simply in how one looks at things.

 ~Troy Campbell~

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, just email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

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Dear Dan,

I’ve struggled with a few major “I wish I could change this” type behaviors for years. Back when I worked in downtown Manhattan, colleagues would religiously bring their own lunch, thermos of coffee, or whatever, and save money on eating out. I often mused that I could probably fund my retirement or at least a few good vacations with all the money I spent on decent but forgettable food.

Well, recently I started a new job at a big company where the only real food option is its own cafeteria—which serves awful food at market prices.

Lo and behold: This cafeteria so insults and annoys me that I’ve been able to fix my long-standing bad habit. Every night before bed, I simply fill up some Tupperware with dinner leftovers. Or I grab a yogurt, make a PB&J—whatever it takes. What lesson can I take from this?

P.S. I’ve been following your podcast, Arming the Donkeys, for years, but I have to tell you the sound could sometimes be better.

—Jennifer

This is a classic case where having all the right information was simply not enough to drive your desired behavior. We know, for example, that telling people about the caloric content of fast food has almost no effect on eating, and that knowing the dangers of texting at the wheel hasn’t exactly moved the needle on safe driving.

We also know that emotions are often much more effective in getting people to behave differently. In your case, disgust and indignation—which can be extremely powerful and motivating.

The good news is that once your emotions instigated this change, you found it easy to change your behavior, and with time this change may even become a habit. At that point, even if you stop being angry at the cafeteria (or you switch jobs), the habit and joy of bringing your own lunch will persist.

P.S. With regard to my podcast, I’ve been thinking about getting a higher quality recorder for a while. Knowing that you’re motivated by anger and revenge, I will get right on it. Thank you.

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Dear Dan,

As a recent college grad, I often find myself coming up with off-the-wall, out-of-the-box, borderline idiotic ideas of what to do with the rest of my life. One day I’ll be thinking of how much I enjoy my job; the next I’ll be considering dropping everything and running off to another country, starting my own business, launching a singing career or pursing higher education in something unrelated to my field, like behavioral economics. I’ll often stew on these ideas before setting them aside, only to revisit them every few months. How can I tell when my ideas are actually legitimate notions or nothing but half-baked schemes?

—Josh G.

First, I am impressed that you’re considering so many different types of jobs. (And I may be biased, but I agree that a career in behavioral economics would be pretty interesting.) In general it amazes me how few possible career paths people consider before picking one to stick to indefinitely.

As for your question: It’s useful to think about two aspects of your job choices: What will make you happy (which is the only aspect people usually consider) and what jobs will be able to teach you something important. If I were you, I would make a list of possible jobs and rate each one on both measures. Next, figure out what your goal is right now (as a recent college grad, you may want to focus more on what you can learn) and then pick the job from the list that best satisfies this goal. Finally, commit to that job for at least a year without looking back.

What you shouldn’t do is stay in one job and think about how different your life would be if you took another. This is a bit like dating one person but constantly checking Match.com to see what other options you might have. It takes away from the enjoyment of your current relationship or job and your commitment to it. So, whatever you do, sticking to your chosen path of action is key.

And if you do end up switching jobs, please don’t tell your parents that you did it on account of my advice.

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Dear Dan,

As we get closer to Valentine’s Day, I am wondering, why do women like jewelry and flowers? Wouldn’t it be better if they liked the kind of things that men liked to shop for?

—Jon

One way to view this discrepancy is that women like these things exactly because men hate shopping for them. If you purchased something for your loved one that you enjoyed shopping for, this would be nice, but having to overcome your aversion to shopping for these items is a much stronger signal of your love and care. So this year, when you are shopping for jewelry or flowers for your soul mate, remind her what a pain it was for you.

And Happy Valentine’s Day.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

When a friend sent me this paper the other day, I admit that I took a long hard look at myself and my economist friends. According to this study, economists, it seems, are worse than most when it comes to truth telling. This discovery was made by researchers Raúl López-Pérez and Eli Spiegelman, who wanted to examine whether certain characteristics (for instance religiosity or gender) made people averse to lying. They measured the preference for honesty by canceling out other motivations, such as altruism or fear of getting caught.

The way they accomplished this was with a very simple experiment where a pair of participants acted as sender and receiver of information. The sender would sit alone in front of a screen that showed either a blue or green circle. He or she would then communicate the circle’s color to the receiver, who could not see the color or the sender. Senders received 15 Euros every time they indicated a green circle, and only 14 when they communicated that the circle was blue. Receivers earned an even 10 euros regardless of the color, and so were unaffected by either the truthfulness or dishonesty of the senders.

So senders had four strategies:

1) Tell the truth when shown a green circle and get the maximum payment;

2) Lie when shown a green circle, choosing a lower payment;

3) Tell the truth when shown a blue circle and receive the lower payment;

4) Lie when shown a blue circle and gain an extra euro.

All was well and good if senders saw a green circle, telling the truth earned them the maximum amount of cash (as you can imagine, option 2) was fairly unpopular). What if they saw blue though? Well, they had two options: tell the truth and lose a euro, or lie and get paid more. The experimenters reasoned that a lie-averse sender would always communicate the circle’s color accurately while senders motivated by maximizing profit would indicate green regardless.

Participants, who were from a wide array of socio-economic and religious backgrounds, also came from a range of majors. Researchers grouped majors together into business and economics, humanities, and other (science, engineering, psych).  The results showed little difference in honesty as a factor of socio-demographic characteristics or gender. A student’s major, however, was a different story. As it turned out, those in the humanities, who were the most honest of all, told the perfect truth a little over half the time. The broad group of “other” was a bit less honest with around 40% straight shooters. And how about the business and economics group? They scraped the bottom with a 23% rate of honesty.

Keep in mind that this was one study of one group of people; however, it does indicate that the study of economics makes people less likely to tell the truth for its own sake. And this holds water, economically speaking: 1 euro has clear and measurable value, it can be exchanged for a number of things. The benefit of telling the truth in this situation does not carry any financial value (which is not to say lying in finance is not costly—clearly it is). But rationalization, which we all take part in, may be easier for those who think in terms of opportunity cost and percent profit.

This is not terribly surprising to me in the context of the greater history of economics, which has been characterized by the study of selfishness. The concept of the invisible hand (inherent in the notion of self-correcting markets) holds that people should act selfishly (maximizing their own profits) and that the market will combine all of their actions with an efficient outcome. While it’s true that markets can sometimes accommodate a range of behaviors without failing, if we continue to teach students the benefits and logicality of rational self-interest, what can we really expect?

Tomorrow night is the opening of my lab’s art show on self-control, and we interviewed a few of our artists to get their take on the project and self-control in general.

Restraining Order: The Art of Self-Control from Advanced Hindsight on Vimeo.

See more on the Artistically Irrational project here.

This week I also got a question about the “trillion dollar platinum coin.” Sadly, we did not have space to put it in the WSJ column, so here it is:

Hi Dan,

Yet another random person on the internet who finds your research interesting and illuminating.

The current bit of economics controversy in the news left me wondering about your take on the trillion dollar platinum coin as a means for avoiding a US default via the debt ceiling. There’s debate on the legality, but there’s also the broader political question of whether or not it’s a “good idea” — which depends on what principles you work from to measure how “good” a consequence is. This leaves me wondering about YOUR expectation about the possible outcomes of such a move.

—abb3w

In my mind, the real issue here is trust. After all, with the amount of debt that the US has right now, we are at the hand of our creditors. If one day they decided to knock on our proverbial door and ask for their money back, we would be in deep trouble. From this perspective, the question is whether such a “trillion dollar platinum coin” would make us appear more trustworthy (as a creative nation that comes up with innovative solutions), or less trustworthy (as a nation that has to resort to shady maneuvers to manage its internal debates). If I had to bet, I would guess that other countries would take the less favorable interpretation of such a move. Moreover, as we know, ones’ initial perspective colors the interpretation of new data, and given the economic hernia that the US has created or contributed to, my guess is that trust in our financial system is not something to write home about.

With all of this in mind, I would try to make the next financial deal one that improves the way that the world looks at our financial health.

(Plus, you can buy a trillion dollar platinum coin for $19.95 on ebay)

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, just email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

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Dear Dan,

While I’m watching sports, I often find myself with the same problem. I will have too many chips for my dip, but if I open up another can of dip I’ll have too much dip for my chips. I don’t want the extra can of dip to go to waste, but I don’t want to have to eat dry chips. What should I do?

—Chris

This is indeed an important problem! What you are experiencing is a problem with ending rules. The chips and dip each provide an experience for you that ends at a different time, making it hard to figure out when to stop.

One solution would be to convince the chip and dip manufacturers to bundle packages that complement each other in terms of size. Another approach would involve pacing yourself from the get-go in terms of the chip-to-dip ratio. A third idea would be to invite a friend who only likes chips (or dislikes the dip you have).

More seriously, the problem you are describing is part of a more general issue, as Brian Wansink shows in his wonderful book “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.” We don’t stop eating when we have had a sufficient amount of food, but when we’ve finished everything on the plate. The best approach may be to think about how much chips-and-dip you want to consume, transfer that amount to small dishes, and stop making decisions based on the size of the packaging.

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Dear Dan,

In “Predictably Irrational,” you wrote about the “Effect of Expectations,” and you demonstrated that we are prone to perceiving things as being more like what we expect them to be than as what they actually are. As an example, you showed that we would experience a glass of wine as better if we had seen positive reviews of it before tasting it. Well, these findings mostly fit with my own experience; however, what you didn’t mention is the possibility of a negative effect for expectations that are too good. In other words, is the effect the same when something is extremely overhyped?

My own observation is that when I passionately recommend a movie to my friends, sometimes their feedback is: “It wasn’t that good. I thought it would be really amazing.” I suspect that they’re experiencing a negative feeling toward the movie because I over-hyped it. Do you think that overhyped expectations can backfire?

—Omid Sani

My intuition is basically the same as yours. When I overhype something, I also feel like people end up with very high expectations (that is, assuming they trust my opinion) and that this can decrease their enjoyment of the experience.

Here is how I view the issue: Heightened expectations can change our experience by (let’s say) 20%, which means that as long as the increased expectations are within this range, the expectation can “pull” the experience and influence it. But when expectations are too extreme (let’s say 60% heightened), the gap with reality becomes too wide, and they may backfire and reduce enjoyment.

If you want your friends to experience something as better than it truly is, go for it and exaggerate. But don’t exaggerate by too much. This kind of “fudge zone” also suggests that in areas of life where people are not experts, you can exaggerate a bit more.

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Dear Dan,

I’m at a loss for understanding the popularity of gossip newspapers and magazines? What is the attraction??

—Dave

I don’t understand it myself, but I suspect that some of the attraction has to do with social coordination.

I have never been in a discussion where people said “I only wish we had more time to talk about the weather / sports / gossip.” But, given the need to find common topics for discussion, these are some of the easiest common denominators to find.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

I have recently gotten hooked on ABC’s Shark Tank (based on the original Dragon’s Den), a reality show in which rookie entrepreneurs seek investments from wealthy self-made investors. These investors are the titular “Sharks,” who receive investment proposals ranging from a folding guitar company to a business in cat toilet-training kits. Once a sales pitch is made, Sharks can offer to invest, and will sometimes compete with one another for the opportunity. At times, the entrepreneurs leave with nothing, and occasionally they are laughed off the stage.

One lure of Shark Tank is the way it puts the psychology of negotiation on display. When entrepreneurs enter the “shark tank,” they put forward an offer, asking a specific amount of money in exchange for a percentage of equity in their company. (Dividing the dollar amount by the percentage stake provides an estimated valuation of the company.) This offer serves as a powerful anchor for both parties, which can exert a dramatic influence on the subsequent negotiations.

In spite of their own appetites for money, when an entrepreneur presents an inflated valuation of their company, Sharks often pass up the investment opportunity. For instance, if an entrepreneur asks for $100,000 in exchange for a 10% stake in her company, but the Sharks estimate the company’s worth at far less than a million dollars, they may back out brashly rather than make a lower offer. Although an inflated valuation may indicate poor business sense on a contestant’s part, it often seems that the Sharks’ decisions to pull out in scenarios like this are based on emotion rather than business savvy.

On the other hand, sometimes a Shark’s initial offer appears to bias an entrepreneur against considering other options. An offer that demands double the equity for the same cash investment may appear unfavorable when, in fact, the initial valuation was off. When a Shark offers to buy a business outright and pay the founder royalties, entrepreneurs tend to reject the proposition, even if it makes financial sense. The entrepreneurs clearly have more invested in their ideas and products than dollars and cents.

The show exposes some interesting contradictions. The Sharks are personable, yet they attack at the first scent of weakness. Kevin O’Leary, the bombastic Shark known as “Mr. Wonderful,” claims that “it’s all about MONEY,” but at times even his emotions seem to cloud his judgment. In other situations, a compelling performance by a contestant is enough to sway the Sharks’ minds, even when the sales figures don’t.

Then again, perhaps letting emotions factor into negotiations is not such a bad idea. It would probably be unwise to go into business with someone with an established negative rapport. A waffling sales pitch may indeed predict wishy-washy behavior in future negotiations, which might seriously hinder business prospects. And perhaps an entrepreneur’s “gut” is actually guiding him in the right direction when he rejects a Shark’s offer. It is, of course, impossible to know for sure, but it is this fascinating blend of calculation and emotion that keeps me swimming after this show’s bait!

~Heather Mann~

As someone who has an advice column of my own, I feel particularly sad that one of the most insightful and influential advice columnists — Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby) died earlier this week. As a tribute to her wisdom, and life, here is one of her favorite responses:

Dear Abby: Are birth control pills tax deductible? — Bertie

Dear Bertie: Only if they don’t work.

For more about the life and contribution of Dear Abby, see this article.

There are times when uncertainty is unbearable: waiting to hear about a school or job acceptance or pacing outside the operating theatre of a loved one. But other times we’re a lot happier being in the dark – or at least partially shaded.

Many of us have spent time beside a pool. And you have probably wondered: what are the odds that no kids have peed in the pool (or adults, for that matter). When pressed, we’d have to admit that the odds that the pool is peefree are close to zero, but the lack of absolute certainty allows us to relax and swim anyway. We may comfort ourselves with some fuzzy thought about chlorine or the immense volume of the pool relative to a few bladders, and our concerns slip away.

Now, compare this with watching a kid stand by the pool and pee into it. Throw in some swimming trunks around his knees and a frantic, embarrassed parent scooping him up, alas, too late. Now you’re no longer able to hold onto the slight possibility that the pool is free of urine. The relative volume of the water in the pool is now little comfort when you just saw a kid pee in it. So, how happy are to take a quick dip?

When things are very close to being certain but we are still able to pretend otherwise, we are experts at using this window, small though it may be, and expanding it. For example, lots of people don’t wash their hands after visiting the lavatory, we all know this, but we can happily imagine that everyone that cooks and serves in a restaurant we patronize does. At least until we see a server leave the stall, straighten their shirt in the mirror, and walk out without so much as a rinse. Dinner is served ruined! It’s only when we face direct evidence like this that we can no longer put our heads in the sand.

This also happens on a broader scale when we hold something or someone in high esteem and then something undesirable happens. Consider the five second rule for food: it’s just enough time that we can pretend that nothing has sullied our snack. Or think about people who “go vegetarian” after reading books like Eating Animals, as opposed to their friends who choose not to read it (sort of like poolgoers who look the other way in order not to see the kid in action). We could also consider all the people on both sides of the political spectrum who don’t listen (with any degree of earnestness) to the opinions and facts presented by the other side.  Ignorance may be bliss, but often it’s just a speck of reality that ruins our ignorance.

JP Morgan Chase’s loss of several billion dollars in 2012 was a similar situation. It’s difficult to imagine that over the last five years we were able to view any company as relatively pure, which is how many viewed JP Morgan Chase. It seemed likely that they, like other banking companies, probably had some skeletons in their closet, but we didn’t know for sure, and so they continued on with their relatively good reputation. In the race to the bottom of the banks, JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon got the best title a banker these days can get: “the least-hated banker in America”. Now we have about three billion dollars to prove the contrary.

While it’s true that for a company that size, three billion a relatively small amount to lose (and surely their accountants could have hidden it), the problem is that now we have direct evidence that they’re not perfect. Once again we were forced to see reality, and we can no longer avoid the knowledge that the pool is polluted – even if the damage was done by the least-hated character. And I suspect that for many the events at JP Morgan Chase further polluted not only their opinion about that company, but also about banking generally.

Recently published in Wired UK.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, just email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

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Dear Dan,

My best buddies and I have a tradition of going on a one-week ski trip once a year. We’ve been doing it for most of the past decade. The idea is that it’s just us guys on the mountain, enjoying the good company and snow. We cherish these moments and can’t wait for the week to arrive every year.

The problem is that once we land at our ski destination, time seems to go by at light speed. The week ends amazingly quickly and when we look back at our time together it seems even shorter. I know that “time flies when you are having fun,” but is there a way to perceive the week as longer?

—Avi

Given the way you phrased the question, the answer is simple: Take your wives with you. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

But more to the point: I suspect that one of the reasons that your vacations seem so short, both in the experience and in your memory after the fact, is because the days of skiing are so similar to each other that they blend together in your memory into one very long day rather than a weeklong vacation.

On your next trip, try to make the days more differentiated from one another. Try snowboarding one day, take a lesson on another day, or just change your ski equipment from time to time. You could take a day off from skiing and go sledding or meet the locals. The point is that even if some days wind up with activities that you enjoy less at the moment (like bowling, for example), the ability to differentiate that day from the other days will help you categorize the vacation as a series of distinct experiences instead of one big glob of skiing. This way, you will get more joy from the memory of these experiences.

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Dear Dan,

A few weeks ago in your column you suggested spinning a penny as a way to make decisions between two similar options. You argued that having to face the moment of truth makes us realize what we really want as the outcome.

This approach might be useful when deep down inside it is clear which way you want the penny to fall, but what about decisions where what you desire is not good for you? For example, when the decision is between chocolate cake and fruit. In this case, you know very well how you want the coin to fall, and flipping the coin doesn’t seem to be very useful.

Any advice on how to deal with such conflicts between the head and the heart?

—Gavin

You’re right. The coin trick is indeed only useful for cases where the two options are of the same type (two cameras, two movies, etc). In your example, one option is more tempting in the short term (chocolate cake) while the other is better in the long term (fruit). In such cases we should not trust our gut feelings to drive us to the best decisions.

Looking around, it is easy to see that we often succumb to temptation and take the option that has short-term benefits and long-term downsides (in your example, this is the chocolate cake). The basic problem is that when we make such decisions we are often “under the influence” of the chocolate cake. Its closeness blinds us to the comparative long-term benefits of a piece of fruit (or, simply not eating the cake). So what can we do? Every time you face such decisions, pretend that it is not about what to do now but what you would like to do a week from now. For example, think of the choice between chocolate cake and fruit for dessert as a decision that you are making for exactly one week from today. When the choice is framed this way, you might be more able to override the influence of your current emotional state and pick the option with long-term benefits.

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Dear Dan,

I just bought a pair of basketball tickets and I plan to treat my friend to an afternoon of slack-jawed wonder as Kevin Durant dismantles our hometown Raptors. Here’s the thing: My friend is very generous and semiwealthy. If I tell him the tickets are on me, he’ll insist on paying…but if I tell him the tickets were free (the only way he’ll let me off the hook about the price), I’ll lose that weird cachet that comes from giving an expensive gift. What to do?

—Gil

Here is what I would do: Take your income per month (for simplicity, say $10,000) and divide it by the cost of the two tickets (again for simplicity, say $200). Now multiply this number by the number of hours you work per month (let’s say 160), and you get the numbers of hours that you need to work to pay for the tickets (3.2 hours in this case). Now, tell your friend “it took me more than 3 hours of hard labor to get these tickets.” (After all, you might not want to tell your friend exactly how much you make.) With this kind of framing, not only will your friend not be able to pay for the tickets, but he will also appreciate your investment in him and your friendship to a higher degree.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.