What people say they want is not the same as what they actually choose. (Ben Haller in The New Statesman May 7 2005)
It is said that doctors, when they ask you how much you drink, will take the answer and double it. (New Yorker 2007)
"People say they want things, and then they don't really want them,"
said Chris Martone, executive chef for Subway... It has developed new
whole-grain breads and put them
up against their refined flour breads in consumer taste tests. The
refined-flour breads always win - though in surveys, people say they're
looking for whole grains. (sfgate.com) People also said they wanted
salads at
McDonalds and then didn’t buy them.
Malcolm Gladwell in
Blink says that according to research by coffee
producers people claim to like
“dark, rich” coffee when actually they
like it milky and sweet.
People think they don't
watch, look at or listen to ads.
“Living in a very
commercial society I make a pointed effort to avoid them. ... I haven't
paid attention to ads for years!” (bbc.co.uk)
Around 1970, I was part of the team that launched Ariel. The
recommended dosage was (can't remember the actual figure - let's say)
50g. One of the technical team told me that in fact the ideal level was
35g. "But many users
assume we try to increase sales by overestimating
the amount you need, and put in much less. Then they find it hasn't
worked well, and assume the product doesn't work. So we recommend a
dosage about 50 per cent higher than the ideal, to make sure they use
enough." (Friend RN writes)
Chinese people say they want to visit Europe
for the art and culture: actually they want to shop.
English people think they want to
live in the country. They spend most of their life living in the city but are convinced that they don’t really belong; they’re not city folk, they’re really country people. They can’t wait to “escape” the “rat race” and the “hustle and bustle” (the other people). They think they want to get away from it all. Then they find they’re trapped, there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go, you have to drive everywhere, there are no shops, nobody to talk to… (They probably even miss the “crowds” they’re always wanting to avoid.)
Others think they want a life abroad where there is “space to think and write”, “space to breathe” – translated, that means somewhere where
property is cheaper so they can afford a big house with a garden. They give up when the money runs out. They realise they can’t get a job locally (apart from oyster gathering), their children don’t learn French just by osmosis, their own French isn’t good enough and it never will be. Even if they speak perfect French, les Français won’t accept them or be their friend; there’s nobody to talk to, especially not other English people from the particular class layer they belong to. They’ve gone there for a “sense of community” but are spooked by people observing and commenting on their every move. (It’s OK for the incomers to observe the natives, especially “quirky characters”.) They realise they actually love the anonymity of the city and go back to London and write about it in The Guardian.
They think they like porridge
plain, with salt.
They think they like
strawberries with black pepper.
Respondents tell researchers what they think they want to hear, or what
the subjects want to believe about themselves (that they only eat a
banana for breakfast,
live the “green” life,
floss
every day, eat out in restaurants not get a takeaway,
go to concerts and the theatre not the multiplex). They tell pollsters that men prefer
curvy women, and women prefer men
with a sense of humour.
Women say they
don’t judge men by their looks. (July 12, 2003)
Men think they won’t mind if their
wife earns more than they do. (Latest research suggests it makes them depressed, August 2013.)
Men say they find
intelligence attractive.
Internet daters say they like
meals out and long walks in the country.
The
Three-Toed Sloth
website casts doubt on dating research that merely asks people to
report their preferences, rather than studying their behaviour: "You might find that students who say they are, e.g., very attractive
claim to demand very attractive mates,
and vice versa... It would not be reasonable, however, to say that you
are actually
studying 'the cognitive processes underlying human mate choice', for
several reasons. You have no data on actual mate choice, but at best on
mating preferences. In fact, you do not have data on actual preferences,
but claimed preferences. And you really don't even have self-perception
data, but claimed self-perception."
People think they like
hard mattresses so they got harder and harder, so hard that you now have to get a mattress topper – a reinvention of the feather bed. (You can even get a Comfort U Total Body Pillow.)
They think they’d like to have “
family dinner” round a dining table in a dining area or dining room once a week, and think they’d eat out in a garden if they had one, or sit out with a glass of wine.
Drinkers think they like
dry white wine, but they don’t really, so the bottlers label medium “dry” and sweet “medium”.
Novelist and mystery-writer Simon Brett is good on people who are always moaning about
belonging to a huge faceless institution, and whining that they want to be free to do their own thing, but actually love the security and the fact that they can get away with doing rather little and have everything laid on.
Nobody tells a historian that they
lived in a slum when they were young - but they can tell you all about the really rough area a few streets away.
The proprietor of an art, craft and gift shop says he’s closing down. He says people come into the shop, look at handmade things, pick them up and say “Oooh, that’s lovely”, and go elsewhere and
buy something manufactured. He thought they’d turn into customers but they don’t.
People think they want to
run their own communities à la Big Society (no interference from petty bureaucrats!). But when it comes down to it nobody wants to do the work. (And probably nobody has an inkling of how much work is involved.)
They all think they’re special and that
conventions are for other people. Oh, and they think they're an individual and don't belong to a
group.
