Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan

Author:Sendhil Mullainathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2014-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

For tasks where we are far to the left of the peak, more attention is good. For other tasks—free-throw shooting, if you’re a pro—we can find ourselves on the other side of the curve, giving too much attention. Free throws are hard for some good players because they focus too much. Bruce Bowen did not have time to think about his three-point shots. But free throws gave him far too much time to think. To make matters worse, the more you try not to think about it, the more you do. Psychologists call this an ironic process. When asked to not think of a white bear, people can think of little else.

Returning to the lonely, we now see why they do so badly. They choke exactly because scarcity focuses them. There is an inverted U-shaped curve for conversation as well. Someone who is distracted and unfocused on a conversation is uninteresting. Someone who is far too focused can seem clingy or needy. The lonely do badly exactly because they cannot think about anything besides managing their loneliness. They do badly because they are past the peak of the inverted U. Instead of listening to their partner and making small talk, they are attentively focused on “Do they like me?” or “Will this be the funniest story?” Just as expert free throw shooters do better when focusing less on the free throw, the lonely could do better by focusing less on their social need. Yet scarcity prevents that. It draws the mind of the lonely to just the place they need to avoid.

Dieters face a similar problem. One of the biggest challenges of dieting is self-control. The easiest way to resist an impulse is if you never have the impulse in the first place. If a particular treat does not cross your mind, it is easier to avoid. If it does cross your mind, the sooner you can get it out of your mind the easier it is to resist. Thinking about that delicious dessert only makes things harder. Dieting creates a scarcity of calories, and that scarcity in turn places the dessert firmly top of mind. Studies have shown that food ends up top of mind of dieters and not just because they are hungry but because of the scarcity they face. In one study, the preoccupation with food grew only more intense among dieters who had just eaten a chocolate bar. Physiologically, they had more calories; psychologically, they had now exacerbated the trade-offs they needed to make. Diets prove difficult precisely because they focus us on that which we are trying to avoid.

In both of these cases, the key feature of scarcity—that it grabs attention—turns into a hindrance. Dieters and the lonely struggle with their scarcity precisely because scarcity makes them focus on every detail.

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