Change of food makes food. Psychologists know that too. The fact that people prefer new and exciting things or activities to familiar ones is supported by the professional literature. This usually involves choices with a hedonic connotation: a visit to a restaurant or cafe (and what you order), a travel destination (and which places you visit), but also your hobbies.
The explanation is put forward that ‘lust satisfaction’ is greatest with novelties. Activities that we have never done or things that we have not experienced yet hold our attention more strongly, and therefore we would enjoy them more. New experiences are also said to satisfy our curiosity, stimulate creativity and even leave a “pink trail in our memories,” a study reports. Familiar matters and activities, and especially too much repetition, threaten to bore us.
There is another side of the story
But there is another side to the story. Because a determining factor appears to be the time that people have to pursue their wishes and lusts. If that time is limited, in other words: when the end of the period in which you can still choose between something new or something familiar, the preference changes completely. That’s according to new research conducted by two psychologists from the University of Chicago. It appeared in the professional magazine this week Journal of Personality and Social Psychology .
The research shows how the science of an impending end influences our preferences and even determines what we want to do in the time that we have left. That may sound dramatic (it reminds of someone whose days are numbered), but of course we constantly experience endings, such as the end of summer, of a journey, but also of a quiet time (before a busy period at work) or a Burgundian lifestyle (for dieting). The endings don’t have to be final.
In the study, nearly 6000 people (university students, as is the case with psychology studies, but also older adults who had been recruited online) were asked about their preference for leisure activities, and their familiar or new interpretations. This happened in eight different sub-experiments. In one of them, the psychologists, who had already started their research at the end of 2019, made grateful use of the lockdowns that had also brought public life to a standstill in the United States – also ending.
An imminent end makes people think about what is meaningful to them
The subjects were each time divided into a group where there was an imminent end, and a control group where there was not. In one of the experiments, participants were able to get a restaurant coupon, but not before completing a thinking exercise. In it, one group was reminded of the limited time they could have for a dinner out, and the control group was told that that time was just unlimited. Nearly 70 percent of the first group opted for a voucher in a trusted restaurant, while less than half of the other group chose it. For the critics: a so-called manipulation check ensured that the participants in the first group actually kept the limited time in mind when choosing a restaurant voucher.
And you now know why, for example, on the weekend before October 19, 2020, when a new lockdown started, you quickly ran to your favorite pub
The results of the study clash with the idea of the bucket list, the list full of new things you still want to do in your life. The psychologists realize that. “In a descending context, we see the opposite: people are more likely to make familiar choices,” they say in a press release from the American Psychological Association.
In it, the psychologists also explain why this is the case. An imminent end makes people think about what is meaningful to them. And those are often things they are very familiar with.’ The researchers write that people like to end in beauty, on a positive note – a familiar note, in other words. And you now know why, for example, on the weekend before October 19, 2020, when a new lockdown started, you quickly ran to your favorite pub.