I was reading about an interesting economic theory last night which we’ll refer to as “probable disappointment,” although the author himself never really labeled it as such. Abbreviated and paraphrased, the theory states that you are more likely to be disappointed by the various things you encounter in life, than pleasantly surprised. Not the most insightful of ideas, but what was interesting to me was how the author went about proving it.
Consider the theory when applied to movies:
If you were to watch a random movie tonight (and your choices were truly random), the chances that you would enjoy it are roughly the same as the chances you would hate it. This is a statistical truth, and yet why do we all generally believe that there are a lot more movies that suck than are decent these days? Well, that’s where the theory comes in.
At the crux of the matter is the fact that our movie-watching habits aren’t truly random. We try to figure out which movies are good based on trailers, reviews or friends’ opinions, but we can never truly know whether we’ll enjoy a movie or not until we’ve actually seen it. In other words, even after all that decision-making, the chances that a movie will be enjoyable is still roughly equal to it being bad. What has changed, however, are our expectations. When we buy that movie ticket or pirate that DVD, we are banking on the fact that the trailers, reviews or opinions we compared were on the money. And so, because our expectations have increased (and the actual likelihood of enjoyment has remained the same), the chances are better than even that we will leave that theater feeling disappointed that things didn’t work out as planned.
There’s this erudite line out of Bill Watterson’s immortal “Calvin & Hobbes” strip, that goes: “I find that the lower I keep people’s expectations of me, the easier it is to surprise them.” (Not verbatim; I couldn’t find the original snippet.) It encapsulates the probable disappointment theory really handily, and even illustrates how to exploit it. If disappointment truly is a consequence of having higher-than-average expectations, then clearly the way to control people feeling disappointed about various things is to control their expectations of those things.
Another illustration, this time more specific:
When I went about pitching syndeo::media’s new toy to friends and early-testers, I made it a point to frame the conversation properly. This is an early-alpha proof-of-concept. It’s buggy, it’s rough in a lot of areas, and it needs your feedback to make it better. No marketing hoopla, no hard-sell, and not even a hint of linkbait-friendly mock-controversy.
I wasn’t being modest, I was being practical.
That said, disappointment can be a good thing for early-stage products. Feeling emotional in a negative way emphasizes what needs to be fixed or changed, so setting a certain level of expectation does serve a purpose. (I do find, though, that people are optimistic by nature, especially when they are being offered a spot in an invitation-only alpha-testing, so you don’t have to do a lot of fluffing to get those expectations high enough to be useful.)
Speaking of expectations/disappointments, moomai’s alpha test is moving along slowly and we’ve managed to find a lot of interesting little bugs and things as our first round of testers begin using it. I’ll write a short piece sometime over the next few days to properly introduce the product and the theories behind it.
But try not to expect too much, ok?