So . . . I'm here at an academic conference in Jacksonville, Florida. The conference is the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) and is pretty much the biggest conference for people in my line of work. I presented some of my research, saw other people's research, and basically marketing-prof-nerded it up for a couple of days. I'm splitting my comments on the conferences into two postings - one today and one in the next day or few. Skip to after the jump to find out my thoughts on Jacksonville and the various decision processes that go into attending a conference.
Really? That enticed you? Okay . . .
So first Jacksonville: I don't hate it as much as I thought I would, though I haven't ventured very far. Jacksonville is a city that has grown tremedously in the past few years, and it shows - everything seems new, well-planned out, and in good condition. What is missing is character; I can't think of anyone saying that there is this place in Jacksonville that you have to check out. Our cab driver told us that the place not to miss was the art gallery, but not because it had any particularly well-known art, but rather because he liked art.
I do have to say that I am quite disappointed in the hotel. Then again, maybe it's too much for me to expect to get internet service faster than what was available in 1998, or a TV remote control that works, or a mechanism by which I can raise the temperature above 15 degrees Celsius. The personnel aren't so hot either - here's the exchange I had with the waiter at the conference lunch today:
Waiter: Can I take your order?
Me: What are the options?
Waiter: Beef or ravioli.
Me: How is the beef done?
Waiter: It's pretty good.
Me: No, I mean, how is it prepared?
Waiter (consulting his info card): It's . . . . sliced.
Me (thinking "Screw this, I don't have the patience"): I'll have the beef.
Now, he was right, the beef was pretty good, but would it have killed him to say it was roast beef with gravy, potatoes, and overcooked asparagus? I don't think so.
Now the conference. Today I'm going to discuss my thoughts on deciding on which session to attend. Last week I was perusing the (200 page) program, going though each session's description and planning my schedule. There are ten sessions during the conference, and each has 12-14 sessions running concurrently, so by deciding which one to attend you are necessarily not attending a dozen others. Good sessions are fun, because there can be discussions that go in interesting directions; bad sessions are a snoozefest.
For each timeslot I had it narrowed down to 3-4 possibilities (based on my research interests, who was presenting, etc). Normally this type of choice task is daunting, because you have to make repeated choices for which you are cutting off options. But this time I took a different view: I figured that of the possibilities, any would probably be acceptable. It's possible that one would be awful or transcendent, but that is hard/impossible to predict, so why expend the effort? In other words, spending more time and effort deciding wouldn't affect my overall experience all that much, so I just went on hunches from that point.
The same could be made for most of the decisions in our lives, big or small. Deciding between two homes? If the decision is really hard, it's probably because they are of equal attractiveness, so at that point it becomes irrelevant which you choose. But we seem to feel that we have to actively make a choice and do so effortfully. This will not necessarily result in a better decision.
Notice that I'm not advocating randomly choosing in all situations, but rather in situations where the options are pretty interchangeable. We have a psychological mechanism (cognitive dissonance reduction) whereby our chosen option will end up looking better than the others anyway once we've chosen. Also, should it turn out to be a bad choice (the house ends up needing a lot work), we'd probably think we should have spent more time deciding, but that sort of thing is unpredictable (assuming you did most of the regular inspections, etc) and could have just have likely happened with the other choice.
So the next time you're presented with a tough choice (which blog to read, which car to buy, which girl at the bar to approach) consider that it probably doesn't matter that much, because the things that will have the greatest impact are the least predictable.
I'll close with the story of Buridan's Ass (no, not the porn film, the philosophical concept): a donkey is in a barn. He looks down at one end of the barn and sees an inviting bale of hay to eat. He looks at the other end sees an equally attractive bale of hay. He looks back and forth, trying to decide which one seems closer so that he can get to the hay with less effort. In the end he starves to death because he can't decide which to go an eat. Don't be an ass: make a decision, even if it may not be the best one (by a slim margin). Better that than to starve.
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