The Joy of SnobberyShallow, snobby morons have more fun. But you knew that already. Now proof of this annoying fact comes from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where professor Baba Shiv decided to study the effects of price on pleasure: If something costs more, does it actually make one happier? (And if it does, why is my idea of heaven a giant dollar store?) Shiv and his co-author from the California Institute of Technology already knew, of course, that price affects perception. A $30 shirt just does not have the same panache as a $300 one. (Or back to me, a $3 shirt with just a slight irregularity. Woo-hoo! Love it.) Anyway, what Shiv wanted to know was, "Is it possible that price could impact the actual pleasure that the brain experiences?" To find out, he invited 20 (very eager) participants to come taste an array of wines. Actually, it was just three wines, but they were presented as if there were a whole bunch of different ones, ranging in price from $5 to $90 a bottle. The participants sat with their heads in a special kind of MRI machine, and just before each sample was squirted into their mouths, they were told, "This is from the $45 bottle," or, "This is from the $10 bottle" — whatever. Squirt. The part of the brain that registers taste was not affected by the prices at all. But the pleasure center? The more the wine "cost" the more it lit up like a Christmas tree. If it were sitting next to you at a restaurant, it would lift its glass and declare, "Superb!" Which, of course, is what happens all the time at restaurants, making the rest of us roll our eyes and wonder, "Does that guy really detect a hint of oak, or is he just full of it?" Now it turns out: It doesn't matter.
Of course, Shiv hastened to explain that these were not wine connoisseurs in his experiment. In fact, it may have been their ignorance that made them so much happier when they thought they were drinking something special. "Whenever people are less confident in their own ability to judge quality, they tend to rely more on price," said James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati. This holds true whether they're trying to judge cars, house paint or liquor. The only problem is that, often enough, price really doesn't correlate with quality. (Just ask a dollar-store vet.) (Or maybe don't.) "In every single article in Consumer Reports, the surprise ending is that the most expensive item is not necessarily the highest in quality or delivers the most satisfaction," Kellaris said. What the über-rational Consumer Reports has yet to realize, I guess, is that even if something expensive happens to be a piece of garbage (or a glass of rotgut), it still can deliver huge heaps of satisfaction simply because it costs a lot, or at least is something your friends don't have. That's why snobbery — the joy of lording something over someone else — is not going to go away anytime soon. Look how the experiment participants rejoiced at the neuron level just knowing they were drinking something most people couldn't afford. Amazing how easy it is to make us happy. Annoying how much easier it is if you're a shallow, snobby moron. (Or live near a dollar store.) Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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