You Cannot Always Get What You Want | Young Eun Huh | TEDxHongKong
three years ago I tried to be a vegetarian first couple of days even really great I ate lots of salads I fell fresh and healthy and even I felt slimmer already but the problem began on day four I start to have a great craving for one of my favorite food which is a big burger but I knew that I shouldn't have this I'm a researcher who studies self-control in food consumption so it'd be really shameful if I give up so easily it's just after a couple days so I went to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch to prevent me from eating any kinds of meat and of course I chose a veggie burger because that was the most simple option to what I create it was a pretty distant veggie burger I would say and I finished all but can you guess what happened that night stomachache no actually that was the last day of being a vegetarian ever in my life I went absolutely crazy for the big burger I mean the real burger so I went to a burger restaurant and I ordered a giant big burger and I finished it by myself my choice of a veggie burger the problem that made me quit so quickly I think so and today I'm going to talk about why choosing a similar alternative is not a good idea when we cannot get what we want so every day we make thousands of choices we chose what to in for breakfast we chose what to wear for today and we chose to come and listen to TEDx talks which is very nice choice instead of doing something else you'd be really ideal if we can get our number one choice but we can always get what we want so according to a recent report by TNS research group about 42% of shopping locations consumers cannot get their most preferred man sometimes it is a loose talk sometimes it is too expensive and in this cases we have to settle for the second best alternatives which we call substitutes so substitutes are products that can be used to replace one another by satisfying the same consumption goal so if a desired product is not available or unaffordable customers often look for and switch to to substitute and there are different types of substitutes and you will recognize this car there's a Lamborghini so suppose you have a great desire to buy this fancy Lamborghini sports car but it's too expensive and you can't afford it what would you do you have to find other options right so you may consider a similar sports car but more affordable one so this similar substitute has similar features as so yeah it has two doors and it has two sets and it is a low filter sports car but you can actually choose something different such as SUVs so SUV is not a sports car but it satisfies our general goal of having a private car so is it serves as a dissimilar substitute another example suppose you have been dreaming about having a vacation in Maldives actually this is one of my dream vacation options but if it is too expensive then you have to find other options so you may consider a similar beach vacation or you can consider something different such as going for skiing instead of relaxing at the beach so you see there are similar substitutes and dissimilar substitutes which one will be a better choice which one will satisfy our craving better so in a study that I conducted with jock and mascara and Carrie mortgage we tested how consumers choose a substitute when a desired product is not available and how effective their choice of substitutes are and we tested this question in the domain of food consumption so in one study we studied what kind of substitutes people generally prefer so we invited participants to come to the lab and first we gave one tiny little piece of delicious chocolate so that was reader sports brand it's pretty delicious and we pre tested to make sure that this is delicious and desirable chocolate to our participants and when you eat only a small portion of food how do you feel you want to eat more right and this is a very well-known effect called sensitization or wedding effect so we intentionally gave one tiny piece of this reader chocolate to increase our participants desired to eat more of the reader chocolate and after they ate one piece they indicated how much they wanted to be more out this chocolate and after that we told participant sorry but this chocolate is not available but you can choose one or two options so the first option was a store pocket so it's like parking shop chocolate brand in Hong Kong so it was the similar substitute and the other option was granola bars so granola bar is not chocolate but he satisfies our consumption goal of having a snack rate so it serves as the dissimilar substitute and participants indicated their choice and they actually consume their choice of alternatives we found that majority of participants about 73% of participants they chose similar substitute whereas only 27% of participants they chose the dissimilar substitute and a further analysis showed that the more they craved reader chocolate after they ate one piece the more they were likely to choose the similar substitute so in one study we tested with different sets of food so we tested with ice cream donut fried chicken but all the time we found the same thing people believed consuming a similar substitute who satisfy our desire better than consuming a distant or substitute so we tested whether this the intuition is correct in other study so in this study participants came to the lab and we gave one tiny piece of reader chocolate and after that participants were randomly assigned to and received 103 different food so one group of participants they received the readers the same delicious chocolate again and the second group they received the storm rain chocolate again which was a similar substitute and the last group they received a granola bar which was the dissimilar substitute and they concerned and its participants they received pretty fair amount of food that they were signed to as a snack and they finished all and after that unexpectedly they received a reader chocolate again so a lot of chocolates going on in this study but this time they ate as much as they wanted and we measure how much they consumed serratus asleep so if our intuition is correct in that consuming a similar substitute satisfies our craving better then those participants who had consumed the store-brand chocolate they should subsequently consume less reader chocolate when they received it again because there should be more satisfied by consuming the substitute as compared to participants who consumed the rental of r-ray but this is not what we found we found actually the opposite so actually participants who had consumed the similar substitute they stopped sick until consume more reader chocolate when they received it again as compared to participants who had consumed the dissimilar substitute or who had consumed the reader chocolate all the time so the result actually suggested those who had consumed the dissimilar substitute they should last rigid your craving for videos chocolate after they consumed the substitute than those who consumed a similar substitute right then why unlike our intuition why consuming or dissimilar substitute satisfies our equiping better than consuming a similar substitute well in our research we found that this is because of the mental compare between the substitute and the desire option that was not available so substitutes are usually less preferred than the products that they are intended to replace because they were not the number-one choices in most cases so if a substitute is similar to the desire option then we are more likely to compare these two because it is easy to compare and we are more likely to notice that this is worse than what I wanted to have but in contrast consuming a dissimilar substitute does not induce such a negative contrast because we don't really compare different things so easily and this substitute looks very different from the desire option that I create so back to my experience as a vegetarian I chose the veggie burger because that was the most more option to what I created but ironically this similarity actually made my experience worse because I was comparing the taste of veggie burger to the rear burger that I craved and I realized that this is worse than what I wanted I want a rear burger right so I believe if I have chosen something different such as mushroom pasta then I might have been able to extend my days as a vegetarian a little longer maybe LS a couple of days so in concluding life often present us with situations where we cannot get exactly what we want we may not get our dream job we may not be able to offer our dream vacations and many cases we have monetary constrain or dietary restrictions that prevent us from eating the food that we really crave our intuition suggested the second best option is a similar one to the most desired option but our research suggests that second best option is actually a dissimilar alternative we satisfy the same general goal so if we choose these similar alternatives then we will be less likely to compare what we have and what we wanted to have and we will be more likely to be satisfied with our choice of second-best option thank you [Applause]