Keeping Doors Open

Why Options Distract Us from Our Main Objective

In 210 BC, Xiang Yu led an army against the Ch'in Dynasty.  While his troops slept, he burned his ships and smashed all the cooking pots.  He explained to his troops that they had to either fight their way to victory or die.  His troops won 9 consecutive battles.  Eliminating options improved the focus of his troops.

We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn't make sense.

Ariely and Shin conducted an experiment on MIT students. They devised a computer game which offered players three doors: Red, Blue, and Green. You started with 100 clicks. You clicked to enter a room. Once in a room, each click netted you between 1-10 cents. You could also switch rooms (at the cost of a click). The rooms were programmed to provide different levels of rewards (there was variation within each room's payoffs, but it was pretty easy to tell which one provided the best payout).

    * Players tended to try all three rooms, figure out which one had the highest payout, and then spend all their time there. (These are MIT students we're talking about).

    * Then, however, Ariely introduced a new wrinkle: Any door left unvisited for 12 clicks would disappear forever.  With each click, the unclicked doors shrank by 1/12th.

          o Players jumped from door to door, trying to keep their options open

          o They made 15% less money; in fact, by choosing any of the doors and sticking with it, they could have made more money

    * Ariely increased the cost of opening a door to 3 cents; no change--players still seemed compelled to keeping their options open.

    * Ariely told participants the exact monetary payoff of each door; no change.

    * Ariely allowed participants as many practice runs as they wanted before the actual experiment; no change

    * Ariely changed the rules so that any door could be "reincarnated" with a single click; no change.

    * "Players just couldn't tolerate the idea of the loss, and so they did whatever was necessary to prevent their doors from closing, even though disappearance had no real consequences and could be easily reversed."

"What we need to do is to consciously start closing some of our doors....We ought to shut them because they draw energy and commitment from the doors that should be left open--and because they drive us crazy."

    * Even when you get down to two doors, choosing is still difficult. "Choosing between two things that are similarly attractive is one of the most difficult decisions we can make."

          o When we focus on the similarities and minor differences between two things, we fail to take into account the consequences of not deciding.  Flip a coin and move on.

Editor's note: This particular irrationality is covered well in "The Paraxox of Choice" (alas, no outline yet)