CHOICE INDUCED INERTIA

WEEK EIGHT: RETIREMENT

26/10/2009

The builders finished the renovation of the bathrooms last week. We now have new shining bathrooms. They look great and the showers are very pleasant. These are so called rain simulating showers. There is not much force but a large surface area of the shower-head delivers quite a lot of water. I was very sceptical initially and was more inclined to have same type of traditional shower which I had before. I was happy with them so why change to a different type? This dilemma was not only with the showers but also with sink, taps, tiles, lighting, mirrors, radiators: in short with everything. There are vast arrays of choices: shape, size, material, colour, price and the technical details like flow, pressure and eco-sensitivity. So much choice makes it more difficult to choose. Availability of more options should make life easier but in reality they make it extremely difficult. This was one of the reasons why I would have chosen the same type of things which I had before. This is what I call choice induced inertia. Or is it something more inherent. When choosing something new there is on average fifty percent chance that it may be better or worse. But generally the mind focuses more on the loss than the gains. You remember traffic lights being red more often than being green. This risk aversion, some psychologists think is hard wired in our psyche. In built preference of status quo is another strong argument to explain different choices we make in life.

It is almost like Newton's first law of motion "Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it." We do not wish to change unless there is a benefit strong enough to overcome our constitutional inertia. And nowadays there is so much choice that it is difficult to see any clear benefit in one over the other and in absence of any perceived clear benefit brain chooses status quo. This by the way also explains why we are paying so much money for our broadband or the mobile, or the gas or .......