Disappointment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  began with several rounds of trades for tokens, which perfectly replicated Smith’s finding. The estimated number of trades was typically very close or identical to the amount predicted by the standard theory. The tokens, of course, had value only because they could be exchanged for the experimenter’s cash; they had no value for use. Then we conducted a similar market for an object that we expected people to value for use: an attractive coffee mug, decorated with the university insignia of wherever we were conducting the experiments. The mug was then worth about $6 (and would be worth about double that amount today). Mugs were distributed randomly to half the participants. The Sellers had their mug in front of them, and the Buyers were invited to look at their neighbor’s mug; all indicated the price at which they would trade. The Buyers had to use their own money to acquire a mug. The results were dramatic: the average selling price was about double the average buying price, and the estimated number of trades was less than half of the number predicted by standard theory. The magic of the market did not work for a good that the owners expected to use. We conducted a series of experiments using variants of the same procedure, always with the same results. My favorite is one in which we added to the Sellers and Buyers a third group—Choosers. Unlike the Buyers, who had to spend their own money to acquire the good, the Choosers could receive either a mug or a sum of money, and they indicated the amount of money that was as desirable as receiving the good. These were the results: Sellers$7.12 Choosers$3.12 Buyers$2.87 The gap between Sellers and Choosers is remarkable, because they actually face the same choice! If you are a Seller you can go home with either a mug or money, and if you are a Chooser you have exactly the same two options. The long-term effects of the decision are identical for the two groups. The only difference is in the emotion of the moment. The high price that Sellers set reflects the reluctance to give up an object that they already own, a reluctance that can be seen in babies who hold on fiercely to a toy and show great agitation when it is taken away. Loss aversion is built into the automatic evaluations of System 1. Buyers and Choosers set similar cash values, although the Buyers have to

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  the harbor I seek is far Maintain lightness. Seduction is a game, not a matter of life and death. away \ Through my verses, it's true, you may have There will be a tendency in the "post" phase to take things more seriously acquired a mistress, \ But and personally, and to whine about behavior that does not please you. Fight that's not enough. If my this as much as possible, for it will create exactly the effect you do not want. art \ Caught her, my art must keep her. To guard a You cannot control the other person by nagging and complaining; it will conquest's \As tricky as make them defensive, exacerbating the problem. You will have more con-making it. There was luck trol if you maintain the proper spirit. Your playfulness, the little ruses you in the chase, \ But this task will call for skill. If ever I employ to please and delight them, your indulgence of their faults, will needed support from \ make your victims compliant and easy to handle. Never try to change your Venus and Son, and victims; instead, induce them to follow your lead. Erato— the Muse \ Erotic by name— it's now, for my too-ambitious project \ To relate some techniques that Avoid the slow burnout. Often, one person becomes disenchanted but might restrain \ That fickle lacks the courage to make the break. Instead, he or she withdraws inside. As young globetrotter, Love. . . . \ To be loved an absence, this psychological step back may inadvertently reignite the you must show yourself other person's desire, and a frustrating cycle begins of pursuit and retreat. lovable— \ Something Everything unravels, slowly. Once you feel disenchanted and know it is good looks alone \ Can never achieve. You may be over, end it quickly, without apology. That would only insult the other per-handsome as Homer's son. A quick separation is often easier to get over—it is as if you had a Nireus, \ Or young Hylas, problem being faithful, as opposed to your feeling that the seduced was no snatched by those bad \ longer being desirable. Once you are truly disenchanted, there is no going Naiads; but all the same, to avoid a surprise back, so don't hang on out of false pity. It is more compassionate to make a desertion \And keep your clean break. If that seems inappropriate or too ugly, then deliberately disen-girl, it's best you have gifts chant the victim with anti-seductive behavior. of mind \ In addition to physical charms. Beauty's fragile, the passing \ Years diminish its substance, eat Examples of Sacrifice and Integration it away. \ Violets and bell-mouthed lilies do not bloom for ever, \ Hard 1. In the 1770s, the handsome Chevalier de Belleroche began an affair thorns are all that's left of with an older woman, the Marquise de Merteuil. He saw a lot of her, but the blown rose. \ So with

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “It’s fine,” Reese says. Though she doesn’t like it and so says, “He was coming then he was going, but then he came back again. Pretty clear, right?” She smiles sweetly. Before the Empress can say no, Katrina jumps back in. “He was born a man, and transitioned, then transitioned back.” “So he was cheating on you, Reese, with you, Katrina?” Kathy asks. “No,” says Reese. “We broke up years ago. We dated as women.” “Ah,” says Kathy, clearly not getting it. “So how did you, Reese, get back into the picture?” Before Reese can say anything, Katrina tries again to explain: How she doesn’t want to be a single mother. How Ames had suggested a queer family. How actually, queer families have all these opportunities that she didn’t realize she was missing back when she was married, and that she sensed were missing in her marriage with Danny. That she always had an affinity for queerness, although because it wasn’t cut-and-dry gayness, she had never known what to call it. Oh, is that how it happened? thought Reese. Now she’s spinning it. But even more than spinning it, Katrina seemed to believe it. She’d re-narrativized her divorce. Those amorphous diffusely unhappy reasons she needed to divorce Danny? Now it was that she had recognized, but been unable to name, a need for the possibilities of queer relationships. One of the other women, a cute plump girl, whose doTERRA confession had been irritation and low moods, broke in. “I feel like I get that. Like, you realize when you get married how much the institution changes things. I remember that in the first few months I was married, how often, if I was out by myself, people would be like, ‘Where’s Max?’ and I would want to be like, ‘Max and I have a marriage where we don’t have to account for each other.’ And maybe I even said that a few times, but eventually, it was just easier to be like, ‘He knows I’m out.’ Everyone says that you can make marriage what you want, but sometimes the institution of marriage really wins out. It’d be freeing to just make up your own rules.” This, to Reese, was the straightest, most married thing anyone had ever said. But Katrina says, “Exactly!” The other women are coming around. Reese sees suddenly why Katrina might be so good at her job. In the span of time it takes to consume a few dessert items, Katrina had begun to convince these women of the soundness of child-rearing with transsexuals. The Empress of Dry Cleaning is the one holdout. As everyone else offers their tentative endorsements, she frowns as if the thought pains her, and says, “I just don’t know. I think everyone wants something queer now. It’s like a fad. And a lot of us end up getting hurt.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  In Amy’s transition, this confidence in the other faded. Jon began to wait in a gentlemanly fashion with her outside of restaurants to make sure she got safely into her cab, telling her to text when she got home. On one hand, Amy appreciated that Jon understood that the world is cruel to transsexuals in a manner that it is not with men, but on the other, Amy wished that Jon still regarded her as a coequal who required no protection. A year into Amy’s transition, Jon got married. His wife, Greta, attempted to make Amy into her friend. She invited Amy to parties in New Jersey and Amy would drink white wine in the kitchen with Greta and the other wives, conflicted: grateful to be included on the correct side of the gender-segregated socializing, while acutely aware that her actual friend was on the other side of the kitchen wall, oblivious to her plight. Eventually, Amy began sitting in the living room with Jon, rather than in the kitchen with Greta, and so Greta stopped inviting her to the parties. In detransition, their meetings returned to the earlier pattern. Jon accepted Ames as a man once more as readily as he had accepted Amy as a woman. The switch caused Jon so little pause that for their first few reunions together as two men, Ames suspected that Jon had doubted Amy’s womanhood all along. But after a short time, it became apparent that those doubts were misplaced. Jon was simply a creature of absolutes. Which is why, this time, it is Ames who has called for a summit of feelings sharing. Ames’s desires and wants have been lost to him in a fog of indecision. Perhaps Jon’s absolutist perspective might hold an answer. After Katrina got Reese’s letter, Katrina offered Ames an absolutist choice of her own. Ames arrived at her apartment that night to find her sitting in front of a cutting board, on which she had crumbled a block of Gouda cheese into bits. He sat down across from her and she launched her thoughts: It seemed obvious to her now that their plan to raise a child with Reese was misguided. She, Katrina, had been swept up in the excitement of a baby, of the newness of being queer, and even if Reese was right—and probably she had been: Katrina was willing to acknowledge that she had overreacted to the HIV news, maybe even for homophobic reasons— that did not change the clear fact that Reese was not a person to be relied on, that Reese’s affair with her friend’s husband, and Reese’s subsequent cruel letter ruled out her participation in their family. Ames noted the way Katrina said “their family.” How she presented it as a fait accompli, a thing that existed already, for the purposes of her argument.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  With a shake, I clear my head. I just want to go. All my vague, unarticulated hopes have been dashed. He doesn’t want me. What was I thinking? I scold myself. What would Christian Grey want with you? my subconscious mocks me. I wrap my arms around myself and turn to face the road and note with relief that the green man has appeared. I quickly make my way across, conscious that Grey is behind me. Outside the hotel, I turn briefly to face him but cannot look him in the eye. “Thanks for the tea and doing the photo shoot,” I murmur. “Anastasia… I…” He stops, and the anguish in his voice demands my attention. I peer unwillingly up at him. His gray eyes are bleak as he runs his hand through his hair. He looks torn, frustrated, his expression stark; all his careful control has evaporated. “What, Christian?” I snap irritably after he says…nothing. I just want to go. I need to take my fragile, wounded pride away and somehow nurse it back to health. “Good luck with your exams,” he says. Huh? This is why he looks so desolate? This is the big send-off? Just to wish me luck in my exams? “Thanks.” I can’t disguise the sarcasm in my voice. “Goodbye, Mr. Grey.” I turn on my heel, vaguely amazed that I don’t trip, and without giving him a second glance, I stride down the sidewalk toward the underground garage. Once underneath the dark, cold concrete of the garage with its bleak fluorescent light, I lean against the wall and put my head in my hands. What was I thinking? Unbidden and unwelcome tears pool in my eyes. Why am I crying? I sink to the ground, angry at myself for this senseless reaction. Drawing up my knees, I fold in on myself wanting to make myself as small as possible. Perhaps this nonsensical pain will be smaller the smaller I am. Placing my head on my knees, I let my irrational tears fall unrestrained. I am crying over the loss of something I never had. How ridiculous. Mourning something that never was—my dashed hopes and dreams. I have never been on the receiving end of rejection. Okay, so I was always one of the last to be picked for basketball or volleyball, but I understood that—running and doing something else at the same time like bouncing or throwing a ball is not my thing. I am a serious liability in any sporting field.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  one on and looked terrible. Jen had assured her that makeup would alleviate the resemblance to an eighties rocker, instead of a beautiful woman, that Amy had been shocked to find staring back at her from the store’s vanity mirror. The difference between the effect that she had always hoped would occur and the reality of what she’d seen in the store’s mirror had so disheartened her that she couldn’t bear to try on another. Maybe if the shopping euphoria returned, she’d thought, but it never did. “T have to be more careful than I was today,” Patrick said, breaking Amy’s reverie. “I can’t let anyone find out about my cross- dressing.” “Me neither,” Amy said. Patrick looked at her. “But you don’t have that much to lose. ’m going through a divorce. Anyone sees me and I could lose visitation with my daughters.” He swallowed hard. “I used to wear matching panties with my wife—sometimes other stuff. She said it was fun, it was like a sexy game. But I know she has already told her lawyer about it and I think they’re going to use it against me.” “Wow. That sucks.” Amy only half believed Patrick. Who was this woman who would let him wear panties around her? No. He had to be lying to impress her. Besides, she absolutely had as much to lose as Patrick, maybe more. Patrick was already a loser. She wasn’t. “I can’t be seen in a store like that one,” Patrick continued. “It could have real consequences.” “But wouldn’t anyone going into that store be going to it on purpose?” “Those women weren’t there on purpose!” Patrick had her there. She didn’t know what to say. This was some heavy adult shit. Custody. Divorce. Instead, she changed the subject. “So do you still want to go to your house to dress up, though?” Other than her minuscule dorm room, Amy had nowhere to wear her new outfit. She couldn’t bear the idea of donning it all only to strut the two steps that it took to cross her thinly carpeted room, back and forth, like a sad-eyed giraffe at the zoo, endlessly circling her tiny enclosure. “Yes,” Patrick said. “Don’t you?” “Mmhmm, please,” said Amy.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese feels a flash of irritation. This is something Reese knows about. For all her mother’s absences, her carelessness about the task of child-rearing, Reese’s mother had insisted on the danger of cribs. It was the one thing her mom was very proud of—she had Reese in bed with her all through Reese’s infancy. It was an eighties parenting thing. Babies shouldn’t be alone at night. Later on, certain science confirmed it: Babies in cribs in the other room had elevated cortisol levels, and some childcare experts theorized that infants exposed to stress hormones nightly at such a formative age could end up locking in baseline stress levels for a lifetime. “When I worked childcare, I talked about this with mothers,” Reese says. “It stresses babies out to be separated at night. You give them separation anxiety. There were studies, even. It’s also way better for the mom. When you have to nurse, you just sleepily hold the baby, and then fall back asleep. Getting up, putting something on, sitting up, that makes you wake up completely. It fucks up your sleep rhythms. Besides, the only times people roll over on babies is when they are drunk or high.” Katrina makes a face. “What do you mean when you worked in childcare? I thought you worked at a gym daycare.” “T did! That’s childcare.” “Tt’s not exactly the same as a degree in child psychology.” That was mean. No, she doesn’t have a degree. Obviously Reese knows her own credentials. Reese chews her lower lip. She wants to say something cutting, but the hurt has come out of nowhere. Instead she looks away, staring hard at a rocking chair. The intimacy of the store dissipates, leaving in its place a cold, stupid, and banal consumer trap. “Tm sorry,” Katrina says. “I’m grumpy.” Reese nods, but still refuses eye contact. “Tt’s just that we have to do things the same way,” Katrina says by way of apology. “We can’t have a crib at my place, and she sleeps in your bed with you. We need consistency.” And this is Reese’s whole complaint. That in the end, when it comes to final say in how the baby will be raised, Katrina, the natal mom, will have that last word. Second-place mom, Reese, would be allowed suggestions only. Reese responds as she so often does when she finds herself in a position of strategic weakness: with a combination of passive aggression and grudging submission. She raises the bar-code scanner and pulls the trigger. It emits a little beep as a complicated network meshes to send the important data through space and time: Enter one Danish crib to a particular registry. “Thank you,” says Katrina. That night, Reese sits at the little glass laptop desk in her bedroom, logs in to buybuybaby.com, and sees that Katrina has removed the crib from their registry. CHAPTER TEN Eleven weeks after conception

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  within-subject experiment; each participant made both judgments in immediate succession. In spite of my long experience with judgment errors, I did not believe that reasonable people could say that adding 5 slightly happy years to a life would make it substantially worse. I was wrong. The intuition that the disappointing extra 5 years made the whole life worse was overwhelming. The pattern of judgments seemed so absurd that Diener and his students initially thought that it represented the folly of the young people who participated in their experiments. However, the pattern did not change when the parents and older friends of students answered the same questions. In intuitive evaluation of entire lives as well as brief episodes, peaks and ends matter but duration does not. The pains of labor and the benefits of vacations always come up as objections to the idea of duration neglect: we all share the intuition that it is much worse for labor to last 24 than 6 hours, and that 6 days at a good resort is better than 3. Duration appears to matter in these situations, but this is only because the quality of the end changes with the length of the episode. The mother is more depleted and helpless after 24 hours than after 6, and the vacationer is more refreshed and rested after 6 days than after 3. What truly matters when we intuitively assess such episodes is the progressive deterioration or improvement of the ongoing experience, and how the person feels at the end. Amnesic Vacations Consider the choice of a vacation. Do you prefer to enjoy a relaxing week at the familiar beach to which you went last year? Or do you hope to enrich your store of memories? Distinct industries have developed to cater to these alternatives: resorts offer restorative relaxation; tourism is about helping people construct stories and collect memories. The frenetic picture taking of many tourists suggests that storing memories is often an important goal, which shapes both the plans for the vacation and the experience of it. The photographer does not view the scene as a moment to be savored but as a future memory to be designed. Pictures may be useful to the remembering self—though we rarely look at them for very long, or as often as we expected, or even at all—but picture taking is not necessarily the best way for the tourist’s experiencing self to enjoy a view. In many cases we evaluate touristic vacations by the story and the memories that we expect to store. The word memorable is often used to describe vacation highlights, explicitly revealing the goal of the experience. In other situations— love comes to mind—the declaration that the present moment will never be forgotten, though not always accurate, changes the character of the moment. A

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Ana!” she interrupts me. “For heaven’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you? You’re a total babe.” Oh no. She’s off on this tirade again. I cut her short. “Kate, please. I need to study.” She frowns. “Do you want to see the article? It’s finished. José took some great pictures.” Do I need a visual reminder of the beautiful Christian I-Don’t-Want-You Grey? “Sure.” I magic a smile on my face and stroll over to the laptop. And there he is, staring at me in black and white…staring at me and finding me lacking. I pretend to read the article, all the time meeting his steady gray gaze, searching the photo for some clue as to why he’s not the man for me—his words, not mine. And it’s suddenly blindingly obvious. He’s too gloriously good-looking. We are poles apart and from two very different worlds. I have a vision of myself as Icarus flying too close to the sun and crashing and burning as a result. His words make sense. He’s not the man for me. This is what he meant, and it makes his rejection easier to accept…almost. I can live with this. I understand. “Very good, Kate,” I manage. “I’m going to study.” In my bedroom, I vow to myself that I’m not going to think about him again, and opening my course notes, I start to read. It’s only when I’m in bed, trying to sleep, that I allow my thoughts to drift through my strange morning. I keep coming back to the “I don’t do the girlfriend thing,” and I’m angry that I didn’t pounce on this information sooner, before I was in his arms mentally begging him with every fiber of my being to kiss me. He’d said it there and then. He didn’t want me as a girlfriend. I turn onto my side. Idly, I wonder if perhaps he’s celibate. I close my eyes and begin to drift. Maybe he’s saving himself. Well, not for you. My sleepy subconscious has a final swipe at me before unleashing itself on my dreams. And that night, I dream of gray eyes and leafy patterns in milk, and I’m running through dark places with eerie strip lighting, and I don’t know if I’m running toward something or away from it… It’s just not clear. I put my pen down. Finished. My last exam is over. A Cheshire cat grin spreads over my face. It’s probably the first time all week that I’ve smiled. It’s Friday, and we will be celebrating tonight—really celebrating. I might even get drunk! I’ve never been drunk before.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  weight in single evaluation, because the numbers are not “evaluable” on their own. In joint evaluation, in contrast, it is immediately obvious that dictionary B is superior on this attribute, and it is also apparent that the number of entries is far more important than the condition of the cover. Unjust Reversals There is good reason to believe that the administration of justice is infected by predictable incoherence in several domains. The evidence is drawn in part from experiments, including studies of mock juries, and in part from observation of patterns in legislation, regulation, and litigation. In one experiment, mock jurors recruited from jury rolls in Texas were asked to assess punitive damages in several civil cases. The cases came in pairs, each consisting of one claim for physical injury and one for financial loss. The mock jurors first assessed one of the scenarios and then they were shown the case with which it was paired and were asked to compare the two. The following are summaries of one pair of cases: Case 1: A child suffered moderate burns when his pajamas caught fire as he was playing with matches. The firm that produced the pajamas had not made them adequately fire resistant. Case 2: The unscrupulous dealings of a bank caused another bank a loss of $10 million. Half of the participants judged case 1 first (in single evaluation) before comparing the two cases in joint evaluation. The sequence was reversed for the other participants. In single evaluation, the jurors awarded higher punitive damages to the defrauded bank than to the burned child, presumably because the size of the financial loss provided a high anchor. When the cases were considered together, however, sympathy for the individual victim prevailed over the anchoring effect and the jurors increased the award to the child to surpass the award to the bank. Averaging over several such pairs of cases, awards to victims of personal injury were more than twice as large in joint than in single evaluation. The jurors who saw the case of the burned child on its own made an offer that matched the intensity of their feelings. They could not anticipate that the award to the child would appear inadequate in the context of a large award to a financial institution. In joint

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  putts for par and birdie? The idea of loss aversion, which surprises no one except perhaps some economists, generated a precise and nonintuitive hypothesis and led researchers to a finding that surprised everyone—including professional golfers. Defending the Status Quo If you are set to look for it, the asymmetric intensity of the motives to avoid losses and to achieve gains shows up almost everywhere. It is an ever-present feature of negotiations, especially of renegotiations of an existing contract, the typical situation in labor negotiations and in international discussions of trade or arms limitations. The existing terms define reference points, and a proposed change in any aspect of the agreement is inevitably viewed as a concession that one side makes to the other. Loss aversion creates an asymmetry that makes agreements difficult to reach. The concessions you make to me are my gains, but they are your losses; they cause you much more pain than they give me pleasure. Inevitably, you will place a higher value on them than I do. The same is true, of course, of the very painful concessions you demand from me, which you do not appear to value sufficiently! Negotiations over a shrinking pie are especially difficult, because they require an allocation of losses. People tend to be much more easygoing when they bargain over an expanding pie. Many of the messages that negotiators exchange in the course of bargaining are attempts to communicate a reference point and provide an anchor to the other side. The messages are not always sincere. Negotiators often pretend intense attachment to some good (perhaps missiles of a particular type in bargaining over arms reductions), although they actually view that good as a bargaining chip and intend ultimately to give it away in an exchange. Because negotiators are influenced by a norm of reciprocity, a concession that is presented as painful calls for an equally painful (and perhaps equally inauthentic) concession from the other side. Animals, including people, fight harder to prevent losses than to achieve gains. In the world of territorial animals, this principle explains the success of defenders. A biologist observed that “when a territory holder is challenged by a rival, the owner almost always wins the contest—usually within a matter of seconds.” In human affairs, the same simple rule explains much of what happens when institutions attempt to reform themselves, in “reorganizations” and “restructuring” of companies, and in efforts to rationalize a bureaucracy, simplify the tax code, or reduce medical costs. As initially conceived, plans for reform almost always produce many winners and some losers while achieving an

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Problem 8 (N= 200): Imagine that you have decided to see a play and paid the admission price of $10 per ticket. As you enter the theater, you discover that you have lost the ticket. The seat was not marked, and the ticket cannot be recovered. Would you pay $10 for another ticket? Yes (46%) No (54%) Problem 9 (N= 183): Imagine that you have decided to see a play where admission is $10 per ticket. As you enter the theater, you discover that you have lost a $10 bill. Would you still pay $10 for a ticket for the play? Yes (88%) No (12%) The difference between the responses to the two problems is intriguing. Why are so many people unwilling to spend $10 after having lost a ticket, if they would readily spend that sum after losing an equivalent amount of cash? We attribute the difference to the topical organization of mental accounts. Going to the theater is normally viewed as a transaction in which the cost of the ticket is exchanged for the experience of seeing the play. Buying a second ticket increases the cost of seeing the play to a level that many respondents apparently find unacceptable. In contrast, the loss of the cash is not posted to the account of the play, and it affects the purchase of a ticket only by making the individual feel slightly less affluent. An interesting effect was observed when the two versions of the problem were presented to the same subjects. The willingness to replace a lost ticket increased significantly when that problem followed the lost-cash version. In contrast, the willingness to buy a ticket after losing cash was not affected by prior presentation of the other problem. The juxtaposition of the two problems apparently enabled the subjects to realize that it makes sense to think of the lost ticket as lost cash, but not vice versa. The normative status of the effects of mental accounting is questionable. Unlike earlier examples, such as the public health problem, in which the two versions differed only in form, it can be argued that the alternative versions of the calculator and ticket problems differ also in substance. In particular, it may be more pleasurable to save $5 on a $15 purchase than on a larger purchase, and it may be more annoying to pay twice for the same ticket than to lose $10 in cash. Regret, frustration, and self-satisfaction can also be affected by framing (Kahneman and Tversky 1982). If such secondary consequences are considered

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  forecasts were largely useless. The evidence that we could not forecast success accurately was overwhelming. Every few months we had a feedback session in which we learned how the cadets were doing at the officer-training school and could compare our assessments against the opinions of commanders who had been monitoring them for some time. The story was always the same: our ability to predict performance at the school was negligible. Our forecasts were better than blind guesses, but not by much. We were downcast for a while after receiving the discouraging news. But this was the army. Useful or not, there was a routine to be followed and orders to be obeyed. Another batch of candidates arrived the next day. We took them to the obstacle field, we faced them with the wall, they lifted the log, and within a few minutes we saw their true natures revealed, as clearly as before. The dismal truth about the quality of our predictions had no effect whatsoever on how we evaluated candidates and very little effect on the confidence we felt in our judgments and predictions about individuals. What happened was remarkable. The global evidence of our previous failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of the candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. We knew as a general fact that our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each of our specific predictions was valid. I was reminded of the Müller-Lyer illusion, in which we know the lines are of equal length yet still see them as being different. I was so struck by the analogy that I coined a term for our experience: the illusion of validity. I had discovered my first cognitive illusion. Decades later, I can see many of the central themes of my thinking—and of this book—in that old story. Our expectations for the soldiers’ future performance were a clear instance of substitution, and of the representativeness heuristic in particular. Having observed one hour of a soldier’s behavior in an artificial situation, we felt we knew how well he would face the challenges of officer training and of leadership in combat. Our predictions were completely nonregressive—we had no reservations about predicting failure or outstanding success from weak evidence. This was a clear instance of WYSIATI. We had compelling impressions of the behavior we observed and no good way to represent our ignorance of the factors that would eventually determine how well the candidate would perform as an officer. Looking back, the most striking part of the story is that our knowledge of the

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  flashes of lightning, exciting and frightening. Allowing no time to react or run for shelter, the rain comes, and brings with it a sense of release. At last. Reversal If two people come together by mutual consent, that is not a seduction. There is no reversal. Beware the Aftereffects Danger follows in the aftermath of a successful se- duction. After emotions have reached a pitch, they often swing in the opposite direction— toward lassitude, distrust, disappointment. Beware of the long, drawn-out goodbye; insecure, the victim will cling and claw, and both sides will suffer. If you are to part, make the sacrifice swift and sudden. If necessary, deliberately break the spell you have created. If you are to stay in a relationship, beware a flagging of energy, a creeping familiarity that will spoil the fantasy. If the game is to go on, a second seduction is required. Never let the other person take you for granted— use absence, create pain and con- flict, to keep the seduced on ten- terhooks. Disenchantment Seduction is a kind of spell, an enchantment. When you seduce, you are not quite your normal self; your presence is heightened, you are playing more than one role, you are strategically concealing your tics and insecurities. You have deliberately created mystery and suspense to make the victim experience a real-life drama. Under your spell, the seduced gets to feel In a word, woe to the transported away from the world of work and responsibility. woman of too monotonous You will keep this going for as long as you want or can, heightening the a temperament; her monotony satiates and tension, stirring the emotions, until the time finally comes to complete the disgusts. She is always the seduction. After that, disenchantment almost inevitably sets in. The release of same statue, with her a tension is followed by a letdown—of excitement, of energy—that can even man is always right. She is so good, so gentle, that she materialize as a kind of disgust directed at you by your victim, even though takes away from people the what is happening is really a natural emotional course. It is as if a drug were privilege of quarreling with wearing off, allowing the target to see you as you are—and being disap- her, and this is often such a great pleasure! Put in her pointed by the flaws that are inevitably there. On your side, you too have place a vivacious woman, probably tended to idealize your targets somewhat, and once your desire is capricious, decided, to a satisfied, you may see them as weak. (After all, they have given in to you.) certain limit, however, and You too may feel disappointed. Even in the best of circumstances, you are things assume a different aspect. The lover will find dealing now with the reality rather than the fantasy, and the flames will in the same person the slowly die down—unless you start up a second seduction. pleasure of variety. Temper

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  entire enterprise was misguided: if one salient cognitive illusion could be weakened or explained away, others could be as well. This reasoning neglects the unique feature of the conjunction fallacy as a case of conflict between intuition and logic. The evidence that we had built up for heuristics from between-subjects experiment (including studies of Linda) was not challenged—it was simply not addressed, and its salience was diminished by the exclusive focus on the conjunction fallacy. The net effect of the Linda problem was an increase in the visibility of our work to the general public, and a small dent in the credibility of our approach among scholars in the field. This was not at all what we had expected. If you visit a courtroom you will observe that lawyers apply two styles of criticism: to demolish a case they raise doubts about the strongest arguments that favor it; to discredit a witness, they focus on the weakest part of the testimony. The focus on weaknesses is also normal in political debates. I do not believe it is appropriate in scientific controversies, but I have come to accept as a fact of life that the norms of debate in the social sciences do not prohibit the political style of argument, especially when large issues are at stake—and the prevalence of bias in human judgment is a large issue. Some years ago I had a friendly conversation with Ralph Hertwig, a persistent critic of the Linda problem, with whom I had collaborated in a vain attempt to settle our differences. I asked him why he and others had chosen to focus exclusively on the conjunction fallacy, rather than on other findings that provided stronger support for our position. He smiled as he answered, “It was more interesting,” adding that the Linda problem had attracted so much attention that we had no reason to complain. Speaking of Less is More “They constructed a very complicated scenario and insisted on calling it highly probable. It is not—it is only a plausible story.” “They added a cheap gift to the expensive product, and made the whole deal less attractive. Less is more in this case.” “In most situations, a direct comparison makes people more careful and more logical. But not always. Sometimes intuition beats logic even when the correct answer stares you in the face.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  were released. He sware elaborate oration, but when he delivered it the opposition yelled and that never was he more laughed so loudly that hardly any of it could be heard. He plowed ahead grieved than at quitting and gave the whole speech, but by the time he sat down he felt he had this good prison of his, but failed miserably. Much to his amazement, his colleagues told him the was exceeding sorry to leave these fair maids, with speech was a marvelous success. It would have been a failure if he had com-whom he was in such high plained or given up; but by going ahead as he did, he positioned himself as favor, and who did express the victim of a cruel and unreasonable faction. Almost everyone sympa-all possible regrets at his departing. thized with him now, which would serve him well in the future. Attacking your mean-spirited opponents can make you seem ugly as well; instead, — S E I G N E U R D E BRANTÔME, LIVES OF FAIR & GALLANT soak up their blows, and play the victim. The public will rally to your side, LADIES, TRANSLATED BY A. R. in an emotional response that will lay the groundwork for a grand political ALLINSON seduction. Symbol: The Blemish. A beautiful face is a delight to look at, but if it is too perfect it leaves us cold, and even slightly intimidated. It is the little mole, the beauty mark, that makes the face human and lovable. So do not conceal all of your blemishes. You need them to soften your features and elicit tender feelings. Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability • 293 Reversal Timing is everything in seduction; you should always look for signs that the target is falling under your spell. A person falling in love tends to ignore the other person's weaknesses, or to see them as endearing. An unseduced, rational person, on the other hand, may find bashfulness or emotional outbursts pathetic. There are also certain weaknesses that have no seductive value, no matter how in love the target may be. The great seventeenth-century courtesan Ninon de l'Enclos liked men with a soft side. But sometimes a man would go too far, complaining that she did not love him enough, that she was too fickle and independent, that he was being mistreated and wronged. For Ninon, such behavior would break the spell, and she would quickly end the relationship. Complaining, whining, neediness, and actively appealing for sympathy will appear to your targets not as charming weaknesses but as manipulative attempts at a kind of negative power. So when you play the victim, do it subtly, without overad-vertising it. The only weaknesses worth playing up are the ones that will make you seem lovable. All others should be repressed and eradicated at all costs. Confuse Desire and Reality— The Perfect Illusion To compensate for the difficulties in their

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious. Still, it took us years to explore the implications of thinking about outcomes as gains and losses. In utility theory, the utility of a gain is assessed by comparing the utilities of two states of wealth. For example, the utility of getting an extra $500 when your wealth is $1 million is the difference between the utility of $1,000,500 and the utility of $1 million. And if you own the larger amount, the disutility of losing $500 is again the difference between the utilities of the two states of wealth. In this theory, the utilities of gains and losses are allowed to differ only in their sign (+ or –). There is no way to represent the fact that the disutility of losing $500 could be greater than the utility of winning the same amount—though of course it is. As might be expected in a situation of theory-induced blindness, possible differences between gains and losses were neither expected nor studied. The distinction between gains and losses was assumed not to matter, so there was no point in examining it. Amos and I did not see immediately that our focus on changes of wealth opened the way to an exploration of a new topic. We were mainly concerned with differences between gambles with high or low probability of winning. One day, Amos made the casual suggestion, “How about losses?” and we quickly found that our familiar risk aversion was replaced by risk seeking when we switched our focus. Consider these two problems: Problem 1: Which do you choose? Get $900 for sure OR 90% chance to get $1,000 Problem 2: Which do you choose? Lose $900 for sure OR 90% chance to lose $1,000 You were probably risk averse in problem 1, as is the great majority of people. The subjective value of a gain of $900 is certainly more than 90% of the value of a gain of $1,000. The risk-averse choice in this problem would not have surprised Bernoulli. Now examine your preference in problem 2. If you are like most other people, you chose the gamble in this question. The explanation for this risk- seeking choice is the mirror image of the explanation of risk aversion in problem 1: the (negative) value of losing $900 is much more than 90% of the (negative) value of losing $1,000. The sure loss is very aversive, and this drives you to take

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  unappealing man like Claudius, not notice me, or care about my affairs with an obvious lack of with other men? But nothing she did seemed to matter to him. candor, and spread herself Claudius marks the extreme, but the spectrum of inattention is wide. A in long considerations about his ruin; his lot of people pay too little attention to the details, the signals another per- departure should be openly son gives. Their senses are dulled by work, by hardship, by self-absorption. anticipated, his tastes and We often see this turning off the seductive charge between two people, no- desires should be thwarted, tably between couples who have been together for years. Carried further, it his poverty outraged; she should let him see that she will stir angry, bitter feelings. Often, the one who has been cheated on by a is in sympathy with partner started the dynamic by patterns of inattention. another man, she should blame him with harsh words on every occasion; she should tell lies about 2. In 1639, a French army besieged and took possession of the Italian city of him to her parasites, she Turin. Two French officers, the Chevalier (later Count) de Grammont and should interrupt his sentences, and send him on his friend Matta, decided to turn their attention to the city's beautiful frequent errands away from women. The wives of some of Turin's most illustrious men were more than the house. She should seek susceptible—their husbands were busy, and kept mistresses of their own. The occasions of quarrel, and wives' only requirement was that the suitor play by the rules of gallantry. make him the victim of a thousand domestic The chevalier and Matta were quick to find partners, the chevalier perfidies; she should rack choosing the beautiful Mademoiselle de Saint-Germain, who was soon to her brains to vex him; she be betrothed, and Matta offering his services to an older and more experi- should play with the glances of another in his enced woman, Madame de Senantes. The chevalier took to wearing green, presence, and give herself Matta blue, these being their ladies' favorite colors. On the second day of up to reprehensible their courtships the couples visited a palace outside the city. The chevalier profligacy before his face; she should leave the house was all charm, making Mademoiselle de Saint-Germain laugh uproariously as often as possible, and let at his witticisms, but Matta did not fare so well; he had no patience for this it be seen that she has no gallantry business, and when he and Madame de Senantes took a stroll, he real need to do so. All these means are good for squeezed her hand and boldly declared his affections. The lady of course showing a man the door. was aghast, and when they got back to Turin she left without looking at — EASTERN LOVE, VOLUME II: him. Unaware that he had offended her, Matta imagined that she was over- THE HARLOT'S BREVIARY OF

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Once this realization set in, Ninon wasted no time. She told the marquis that she was returning to Paris, and that it was over for good. He begged and pleaded his case with much emotion—how could she be so heartless? Although moved, Ninon was firm. Explanations would only make it worse. She returned to Paris and resumed the life of a courtesan. Her abrupt departure apparently shook up the marquis, but apparently not too badly, for a few months later word reached her that he had fallen in love with another woman. Interpretation. A woman often spends months pondering the subtle changes in her lover's behavior. She might complain or grow angry; she might even blame herself. Under the weight of her complaints, the man may change for a while, but an ugly dynamic and endless misunderstandings will ensue. What is the point of all of this? Once you are disenchanted it is really too late. Ninon could have tried to figure out what had disenchanted her—the good looks that now bored her, the lack of mental stimulation, the feeling of being taken for granted. But why waste time figuring it out? The spell was broken, so she moved on. She did not bother to explain, to worry about de Villarceaux's feelings, to make it all soft and easy for him. She simply left. The person who seems so considerate of the other, who tries to mend things or make excuses, is really just timid. Being kind in such matters can be rather cruel. The marquis was able to blame everything on his mistress's heartless, fickle nature. His vanity and pride intact, he could easily move on to another affair and put her behind him. Not only does the long, lingering death of a relationship cause your partner needless pain, it will have long-term consequences for you as well, making you more skittish in the future, and weighing you down with guilt. Never feel guilty, even if you were both the seducer and the one who now feels disenchanted. It is not your fault. Nothing can last forever. You have created pleasure for your victims, stirring them out of their rut. If you make a clean quick break, in the long run they will appreciate it. The more you apologize, the more you insult their pride, stirring up negative feelings that will reverberate for years. Spare them the disingenuous explanations that only complicate matters. The victim should be sacrificed, not tortured. 6. After fifteen years under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French were exhausted. Too many wars, too much drama. When Napoleon was defeated in 1814, and was imprisoned on the island of Elba, the French were more than ready for peace and quiet. The Bourbons—the royal family deposed by the revolution of 1789—returned to power. The king was Louis XVIII; he was fat, boring, and pompous, but at least there would be peace.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  that his interest is a little less romantic than the day before. He returns to mother. The boy tries to being the intellectual. This stirs the worrisome thought that her natural demonstrate what he charms and beauty no longer have as much effect on him. She must try wishes by doing it himself: look, I would like you to harder, provoke him sexually, prove to herself that she has some power over act thus toward me, to be him. She is now brimming with erotic desire, brought to that point by Jo- thus tender and loving to hannes's subtle withdrawal of affection. me. Of course this attitude is not the result of Each gender has its own seductive lures, which come naturally to them. consideration or reasoned When you seem interested in someone but do not respond sexually, it is planning but an emotional disturbing, and presents a challenge: they will find a way to seduce you. To process by identification, a produce this effect, first reveal an interest in your targets, through letters or natural exchange of roles with the unconscious aim subtle insinuation. But when you are in their presence, assume a kind of 390 • The Art of Seduction of seducing the mother into sexless neutrality. Be friendly, even warm, but no more. You are pushing fulfilling his wish. He them into arming themselves with the seductive charms that are natural to demonstrates by his own their sex—exactly what you want. actions how he wants to be loved. It is a primitive In the latter stages of the seduction, let your targets feel that you are be-presentation through coming interested in another person—this is another form of taking a step reversal, an example of back. When Napoleon Bonaparte first met the young widow Josephine de how to do the thing which he wishes done by her. In Beauharnais in 1795, he was excited by her exotic beauty and the looks she this presentation lives the gave him. He began to attend her weekly soirees and, to his delight, she memory of the attentions, would ignore the other men and remain at his side, listening to him so at-tendernesses, and endearments once received tentively. He found himself falling in love with Josephine, and had every from the mother or reason to believe she felt the same. loving persons. Then, at one soiree, she was friendly and attentive, as usual—except — T H E O D O R R E I K , that she was equally friendly to another man there, a former aristocrat, like OF LOVE AND LUST Josephine, the kind of man that Napoleon could never compete with when it came to manners and wit. Doubts and jealousies began to stir within. As a military man, he knew the value of going on the offensive, and after a few weeks of a swift and aggressive campaign he had her all to himself, eventually marrying her. Of course Josephine, a clever seductress, had set it all up.