Malcolm Gladwell on Preferences

First on stage at this year’s PopTech is author of the Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell, who has the uncanny ability to interpret research findings and tantalizing theories in sociology and other fields and apply them to business and organizational problems to generate value.

Gladwell discusses how unstable human preferences are in the first session on Human Nature. The first example he uses to support this argument is the story behind Herman Miller’s Aeron chair.

Early market research indicated that people thought that the Aeron Chair was ugly and unfunctional, an invention that later won a number of design awards and proved to be the most widely sold office chair in American history. After the Aeron took off, people thought the chair was beautiful. How is it possible that the same device they thought was ugly in early tests became so beautiful later on? he asks the audience. “What does this say about human nature?”

Gladwell thinks that people’s feelings about their preferences are incredibly unstable.

He gives us another amusing example of the Pepsi/Coke preference test. Do you know that Pepsi was always the first one tasted? I had no idea. The outcome of Coke’s sales decline after the Pepsi Coke challenge was NEW Coke. After 100,000 taste tests, the CEO was convinced that they had a “better coke,” and that based on this objective measure, the people’s preferences who were sampled had to be stable.

There are flaws to a blind taste Gladwell says. It’s not an objective test because “when you’re only taking a sip, you almost always prefers the sweetest drink.” He also suggests that the triangle test is more proof of how unstable people’s preferences really are.

People originally said they didn’t like the Aeron. But why would we believe them? Since we don’t have access to our subconscious, he suggests, that we make up stories when forced to explain why we like or don’t like something.

It’s often difficult for people to describe how and why they make a particular decision, or do the things they do, so in the absence of being able to access the right language, they tell a story. Where’s the connection to reality here?

In a survey done with students, they were asked to choose a poster they loved. Half the students were told they had to describe “why they loved their poster,” and the other half didn’t need an explanation. Those who had to explain their reason more often chose the least sophisticated poster.

Why? Making people have to explain what they want, changes their preference, sometimes in a negative way.

Gladwell asks “Does this mean that we can’t trust people at all?” Perhaps there’s a class of products that are just difficult to describe. If we’re forced to describe something, we may call it ugly because we don’t have the right language to explain how we really feel. The danger here is that we may throw things out that could be the most meaningful or the most revolutionary.

In his summary, he notes that there are two important lessons to learn, one of which is from his new book Blink,” which is slated to be released in January 2005. First, people who come up with new inventions need to be careful about how measure people’s preferences. We need to be skeptical of the words ‘ugly,’ ‘no,’ and ‘I don’t like that,’ particularly when it involves something unusual or radical.

The second implication is that we have become incredibly good at describing the way human beings work. We understand genetics and physiology. We have knowledge about why we do the things the way we do. What we haven’t really captured is interpreting the content of our own hearts. He closes by saying that we need to be humble because this is a mystery we may never solve.

I have seen him speak in the past and every time, you sit there and wonder “where is he going with this.” And every time, he brings it full circle in an abstract and creative way. Bravo Malcolm.

In his forthcoming book, Blink, Gladwell analyzes social intuition, or how we know what we know in social situations, and especially, how we read facial expressions. Blink may do for our knowledge of communication, both personal and corporate, what The Tipping Point did for our understanding of trends.