Lessons From Longland

I do it every time I come to Longland: I take a train that goes express across most of the country, but then I have to wait and change before I get to my final destination. In the end, it’s no quicker (or cheaper) than the slow train going direct, and I’m always dissatisfied with the journey. Why don’t I just choose the other train?

Professor Dilip Soman understands what I’m going through. He is associate professor of marketing at Hong Kong University and first became interested in the field whilst working as a sales engineer in the 1980s. He explains, ‘I realised that different ways of presenting the same piece of numerical information could illicit different responses from customers.’ Soon he quit his job and gained a PhD in behavioural science.

Longland spans nine hundred miles east to west, but only fifty north to south. Dilip created it to support his recent theory that how people evaluate an experience depends crucially on when they evaluate it. Although Longland’s train network is linear (a simple configuration to test predictions), it has many realistic features including delays and backtracking.

Dilip gave participants a timetable for the six cities in Longland and told them to plan a journey. He found that late obstacles influenced backward-looking evaluations to a greater degree than forward-looking ones, and vice-versa. My train route is one with early progress and a late obstacle, which means I eagerly pick it, but ultimately regret my choice. Why do I choose the same route each time?

‘It all depends on time separation.’ Says Dilip, ‘Evidence shows that people might not learn as well as we think they should.’ He explains, ‘If I have just had a yucky experience and you ask me to go right back, I may refuse. But a week later, the easy setup is more memorable than the struggle I faced towards the end.’ He agrees this supports the phrase “time heals wounds” but adds, ‘There may be other ways of inducing the same effect, e.g. an appropriate distraction.’ Taking this advice, I head for some retail therapy.

I notice something interesting while shopping in Longland; a new supermarket is using a unique reward scheme to win customers. Where old stores gave customers a reward after they collected a thousand loyalty points, the new one has started giving a worthless voucher every two hundred points and then a reward for collecting five vouchers. Not only do shoppers not realise the schemes are equivalent; some even increase spending to collect the vouchers.

Maybe the reason is a desire to experience what Dilip describes as ‘virtual progress’. He explains it using another of his experiments where, ‘People had to walk from one corner of a rectangular yard to the opposite corner.’ Sounds simple? Well, in this test, volunteers were not allowed to walk straight across. They had to choose to go along either the long or short edge first.

‘When I asked people to choose how to walk,’ Dilip says, ‘most people started walking along the longer side first’ His reason is that on the long side the projected speed of approach to the opposite corner is higher (think about it), but the total time taken for both edges will be the same - hence virtual progress. He also found that when randomly assigned, people who walked on the longer side first were relatively less happy at the end.

I see this also explains my train dilemma. Other examples might include taking slower roads to avoid motorway queues, or buying online because it’s convenient then being frustrated during the delivery wait. It seems virtual progress influences our actions on a subconscious level, often causing us to regret decisions with hindsight. So, is it a trap we can avoid?

Dilip suggests keeping a record of previous experience, imagining how you will feel after the event, or focusing on changing the goal (something he would like to research more). For instance, if I don’t mind when my flight home from Longland arrives because I want to get some reading done on the way, then any delay problems disappear.

Professor Soman may have created a fictional place, but it has a real message: How we feel about something depends on time, and our evaluation will probably change. There could even be a way to view the situation that makes potential obstacles vanish. It seems people would do well to keep Longland in mind when next faced with an important decision.