Less > More: A fresh perspective

There has been a new discovery in psychology, a finding that is dominant enough to affect all our lives and almost all aspects of our lives. About a year ago, psychology researcher Norbert Schwarz and his team conducted a study into the inner workings of the minds of two people during a specific type of a conversation – where one is trying to impress the other and expect something in return, like a job or their money, and the other is listening to everything that is being put on the table and making up a decision whether to give them what they expect. The results of the study surprised even the researchers enough that they categorized its generality as a paradox and called it ‘The Presenter’s Paradox.’

The idea is simply this: Whenever you are on the presenter’s end of submitting a list of your accomplishments, you mention all of your accomplishments, regardless of how big or small they are, instinctively assuming that the person you are presenting them to is adding them all up. The person on the receiver's end, though, hears a completely different story. They don’t add you accomplishments, they instinctively average them out. If you scored a 750 on GMAT (say 10 points for this), organized a college festival in the capacity of a student president (say 10 points again), served as the editor-in-chief of the college magazine (10 points), and then also mention that you came second in a cooking competition (2 points), your hope is that your score adds up to 32 as it has in your head; when in reality, from the perspective of the judge, you only scored an average of 8, as opposed to scoring an average 10 had you not mentioned the cooking competition bit at all (not 10+10+10+2=32, but 32/4=8). In short, quality, not quantity.

This phenomenon of adding-versus-averaging has caused quite a sensation in psychology fields in the past year since its publication. Follow-up studies – a total of seven – have found the same behavior exhibited in a variety of different circles. In one study, customers were asked to price an ipod without any freebies and another identical ipod that came with a free song. On average, they were willing to pay $242 for the one without the free song and $177 for the one with the free song. This seems counterintuitive. Why would anyone pay more for less? (Here's another neat example of this same phenomenon). In a second study with different participants, they reversed the scenario and asked them to guess which one a customer was more likely to buy, and 92% of them said the one with the free song would sell more. Our reasoning dramatically transforms when we are presenters and receivers, and it turns out that this reasoning takes place completely differently in our subconscious mind than our conscious.

I had written a blogpost a year ago about the brain having evolved to conserve every last bit of neuron in order to save brain space, because it only has a limited amount of gray matter to work with for a million of its callings. It only allocates the absolutely-necessary number of neurons to any task and not a neuron more – it’s frugal but it gets the job done like a pro. Averaging is a much better way of conserving brain space than summation. In the above example, 8 is a much simpler number than 32 – not just in terms of the number of digits but also in terms of how it is arrived at. In the case of summation, the brain begins with the first number, adds it to the second, adds this new number to the third...and with each iteration the number gets not only bigger but more importantly much different than the previous summation. However, in the case of average, the brain only has to vaguely average out the first two numbers, and from the third number onwards the average will be much closer to the average of the first two and not vary significantly – and any significant variation in new items added will immediately tell you whether the average has gone up or down with just a glance at the numbers without having to do the math. You instinctively know that the average of three 9s and two 8s is higher than the average of three 9s and two 8s and a 3, without even knowing what that average is. You know, instinctively, that the average of the whole set has gone down with the addition of a number that is significantly less than the average of the first five; and if this newly added number is not significantly less than the average of the first five, you again know instinctively that the average hasn’t changed much – a very simple but effective tool in decision-making that consumes much less brain power than having to individually add up each number and remember the new summation each time. This logic applies whether you are dealing with 4 items or 10, although the study hasn’t been conducted for very large number of items so I don’t wish to speculate there.

The brain has evolved over millions of years to do this kind of averaging without associating concrete numbers to anything. It comes naturally to us – provided we are at the receiver’s end.

This finding has significant impact on how you should conduct yourself, be you an interviewee (presenter) or be you designing a product for sale (presenter), be you gifting many gifts on someone's birthday (presenter) or be you accepting punishment (receiver). Yes, it even applies to how you perceive punishment, which was one of those 7 studies. Participants of the study were asked to choose between two punishments for littering: a) $750 fine, or b) $750 fine plus two hours of community service. Paradoxically, 86% of the participants chose option B because they reasoned that it was less severe than option A – which is ridiculously, obviously not true. Not only that, but they also reasoned that option B was significantly less severe than option A. The Presenter’s Paradox had come into play, (this time being not the presenter but the receiver) and their brains averaged out the overall punishment, because not many perceive community service as a severe form of punishment in comparison with a $750 fine, so the overall perception of the severity of punishment diminished.

As a general rule, in any situation where you are either presenting, or are being presented, multiple items with the expectation of an impeding decision of approval or selection, stop and ask yourself which side of the fence you are on (presenter or receiver) and:

1. Remove items that reduce the overall quality of your presentation if you are the presenter, or
2. Add, don’t average, all the items if you are the receiver.

Now then, since I have the habit of relating everything I read or observe to filmmaking/filmmakers: Stanley Kubrick had noticed, or at least had an inkling of, this phenomenon back in the 70s, as is visible in this quote:

“It is not so important to make a good film as it is to not make a bad one.” - Kubrick

He knew that if he made a bad film, his good films will not come for his rescue and his overall reputation would suffer. He ended up making only 11 feature films in his entire career. Had Sydney Lumet made only 11 good ones, instead of the 50 eclectic feature films he did make, he too would’ve been revered alongside Kubrick, not an inch lower. The saying “less is more” isn’t all bullshit.

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