Social norms and market norms are separate and you must not mix them. Social norms prevail in social situations. For example, if two friends go out skiing and one friend gives the others some pointers just for fun, that’s a social situation and social norms prevail. The instructor would find it absurd to be given cash at the end of it, but might feel slighted if the student didn’t invite him to his Super Bowl party. If a person goes out and hires a professional ski instructor, the ski school requires the student to pay full freight, but the instructor has no expectation of being invited to the student’s party.

In most of our lives, it’s clear which realm were in. However, in Predictably Irrational, which I’ve mentioned before, Dan Ariely shows the danger of mixing these two realms, because if you do, market norms typically win, though by themselves social norms can have a bigger effect. For example, when they pay people to do tasks, the people who are paid tend to perform more work in a given amount of time as their pay increases. But those who do the work as volunteers actually do more work than any of the paid subjects (see pages 70-75). People love to help other people and in the social realm we work for the good feeling that we get from doing something for someone. This is so powerful, in fact, that research shows that giving to others makes us happier than does buying something for ourselves.

You mess this up if you tell Aunt Marge how much your gift bottle of wine cost. Even if she knows it’s cheap or expensive, even if she knows the exact dollar worth of the wine, it fits within the context of social norms until the price is explicitly mentioned. But then, no matter what the price, it fits within market norms.

Companies mess this up all the time by trying to ingratiate themselves, pretend you have a relationship, you and the company are friends. But the second they hit you with a late fee and refuse to budge, the second they tell you that they have policies and can’t treat you differently than everyone else, they have violated the social norm and entered the realm of market norm. If it has always been a market relationship, that presents no problem. But if you’ve been courted like a friend, like your relationship is personal, like you won’t be treated like everyone else, the abrupt reentry into the realm governed by market norms feels like a betrayal. You end up having stronger negative feelings toward the company than you do towards companies for whom they never had any warm fuzzy feelings. It’s like the difference between hailing a cab and, upon reaching the destination, being asked to pay the fare. No problem. But if you ask a friend for a ride to the airport and at the destination you’re asked to pay “just half” of the cab fare because “we’re friends”. It’s a stab in the back and when companies act this way, they should be prepared to have accounts closed and to see virulent blog posts and horrid word of mouth publicity.

Ariely puts it thus:

If you’re a company… you can’t have it both ways. You can’t treat your customers like family one moment and then treat them impersonally — or even as a nuisance or a competitor — a moment later when this becomes more convenient or profitable.

Personally, I never become “friends” with companies, only with people. So no matter how much I respect a business, I don’t buy t-shirts with their logo and I don’t put their stickers on my car. So I’m disloyal, but I’m safe. But what about all those people who not only buy ice cream, but buy a Ben and Jerry’s t-shirt, that is they pay for the right to wear advertising?

Of course, I can be bought cheap. If I don’t hate your company and there’s a free t-shirt in it…

We as humans tend to key on contrast and judge value by the relationship of one thing to another. If we can find a comparable, we always do. The way Starbucks got us to buy $4 cups of coffee (er, you, anyway, since I have never bought a coffee a Starbucks, but I have bought a double chocolate cream frappucino) was to make the experience difficult to compare to Dunkin Donuts. Euro-style tables, funny names, funky music, soft lighting, all contributed to an ambiance sufficiently different to make the comparison difficult. Tough economic times, have made people more willing to see coffee as coffee and refuse to pay for the experience (that and, of course, the fact that the Starbucks experience has become mundane itself, just like Dunkin’ Donuts).

We all know that from personal experience, but I have been seeing it a lot more clearly since reading Dan Ariely’s fun book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and the interesting, though a bit more stodgy Robert Cialdini book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. So here’s where it gets interesting. Savvy marketers know that we judge value by contrast and relationship. So the Economist offers subscriptions for the following rates (or did when Ariely did his study):

1. $59 for the online-only subscription.
2. $125 for the print-only subscription.
3. $125 for the print and online subscription combined.

What’s going on there? Why even bother to offer option 2? Simple. It isn’t clear which is the better deal between $59 for the online subscription or $125 for the print subscription, but there’s no question which is the better deal between the print-only and the print and online option. Because of that and because those two are obviously comparable — different offers at the same cost — we key in on those two options. When Ariely showed the offer to MBA students at MIT, only 16% went for the online-only subscription, none went for the print-only option and a whopping 84% signed on for the combo. The deal was too good to pass up. But, and this is where it gets really really interesting, what if you eliminate the print-only subscription? After all, not a single person wants it anyway, so it’s not really an important part of the offer, right? Well when he offered only two choices, the online version and the combo (options 1 and 3 in other words) to MBA students, with no “decoy” offer, 68% opted for the internet-only option. So in other words, by focusing the comparison on the $125 option, they shifted from a measly 32% willing to pony up $125 to a whopping 84%. That’s the power of contrast! We are just not wired as humans to think in absolutes, which is usually a good shortcut as historically, evolutionarily (and in most life-threatening situations) we have very few choices and choosing quickly has advantages. In the modern marketplace, though, it’s a different story.

Cialdini has all sorts of examples where the contrast principle is used to influence our decisions. Brunswick pool tables instructed salesmen to start by showing the most expensive pool tables “just to see what the high-end features are” and then bring people down the price ladder. Result: a big increase in the amount people were willing to spend because the mid-range tables now seemed cheap. Some clothing retailer figured out that if a man comes in to buy a suit, always sell the suit first and the accessories second. After making the big purchase, what’s another $20 for a tie? But if they choose the tie first, they’ll go for the $10 tie instead.

This is also why discounts, coupons, MSRPs on cars that nobody pays, and “$97 value, yours for only $27″ work even if nobody in the history of humanity would consider paying $97 for the piece of junk that really isn’t even worth $27. Even though in our rational mind we know with certitude that the list prices are absurd and nobody pays them, they anchor us on high prices and we compare the sales price to the high price put in our mind because we are wired to compare. This is so subtle and so powerful that if you simply ask people what the last two digits of their social security number are, this will actually influence how much they are willing to pay for something later. Those with higher numbers are actually willing to pay more because the higher number is still stuck in their mind and that provides the mental anchor at that moment. In the absence of a meaningful comparison, they are simply comparing the last two numbers they have heard and that makes a price seem reasonable or unreasonable depending on what has become set as their anchor.

So as a consumer, you need to really think about what comparisons you make implicitly, without thinking about it. And as a merchant, of course, you need to think about what comparisons your customer is making.

In my last little rant about 212:The Extra Degree, I described how the main thing that offended me about the whole movement was the ill-informed metaphor they use. I hate a bad metaphor based on bad reasoning. That got me thinking of the times I’ve been told that "logic betrays us" by which the person saying it usually means that "common sense" often provides superior information to logic. Let me be the first genius to tell you that a little bit of common sense should tell you that isn’t true. Saying logic betrays us is like saying hammers betray us. Hammers betray us when we try to use them to drive machine screws into sheet metal, but for sinking a nail into a piece of wood, a framing hammer is a damn reliable tool. Logic too is an utterly dependable tool: you can depend on it to bring you to solid conclusions if it is used well and based on good assumptions. You can, on the other hand, depend on it to bring you to the most absurd conclusions if used incorrectly or if you start from faulty assumptions. In this age of American unreason (see Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason or Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science) I guess it’s necessary to point that out.

Malcolm Gladwell made a big splash with Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, a book that argues that often our gut reactions can get us to the same result as considered reflection, but much quicker and with surprising reliability. I don’t refute that and it’s often true, though my favorite book that makes that point is Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear (a great read). In any case, under some circumstances where we have a need to process lots of information quickly (fighting a structure fire, escaping a rapist), our instinct is often a better guide than reason because we may not have time to apply our reason before we get killed, but subconscious processing in our minds often finds a viable solution rapidly. Damn useful. But I see the idea extended in support of unreason and the belief that our gut reactions trump considered reflection (and I don’t blame Gladwell for that). If there’s time to consider and reflect and, more importantly, to test, that’s better. Always.

Logic by its very nature can be neither loyal nor disloyal, and therefore can never betray. Whenever you hear that we cannot trust reason, be prepared because you are about to be fed some bullshit, perhaps innocuous, perhaps dangerous. Reason cannot always provide a satisfactory answer to our questions, our needs and our hopes. It’s not always the solution, but it never betrays us. We cannot always trust to reason, but we can always trust reason.

I remember in particular two cases in particular from my late teens where I was told that logic is a poor guide and I was told this in contexts where you would least expect it: in the preface to a book of logic puzzles and in a philosophy class in college.

The fake syllogism.

I was in a philosophy class taught by a great and inspiring teacher, but not a man whose logical faculties were not highly developed. He was making the argument that the Nazis used logic to show that because Jews were bad, Nazis were good. The syllogism he gave was this one:

Proposition 1: All Jews are bad.
Proposition 2: We are not Jews.
Conclusion: Therefore we are good.

I don’t refute that this is part of appeal of anti-semitism for the Nazis and others, but it has nothing to do with logic. A fundamental aspect of a syllogism is that any terms can be replaced and it still makes sense as long as the propositions are equivalent. Again, logic is neither loyal or disloyal, merely a tool. So that syllogism is the same as this one:

Proposition 1: All elephants have eyes.
Proposition 2: We are not elephants.
Conclusion: Therefore we do not have eyes.

In any undergraduate class, 10% are paying close attention to what the teacher is saying and really understanding it, 10% are utterly confused and lost, and the other 80% are having sexual fantasies. That’s been proven. Miraculously, on the day in question, yours truly was in the 10% who were paying attention. So I pointed out the problem with the syllogism and was told by some very smart people, including the professor and someone who is now a top cardiologist, that I wasn’t getting it. "It’s a simple syllogism" I was told. No, it was a faulty syllogism, and potent as such, but it was unreason that allowed such lies to be perpetrated, not reason. Reason did not betray the Jews, unreason betrayed them.

Of steam and ice.

This one is less harmful and absolutely analogous to the 212: The Extra Degree folly.

James Fixx, who wrote The Complete Book Of Running, a major bestseller in 1970s that helped popularize running, also wrote the lesser-known Games for the Super Intelligent. I owned it, but my pride is not such that I bought it. It was a gift. A joke I think. In any case, that book or its sequel asserted in the preface that fun as the logic games within may be, sometimes logic betrays us and is a poor guide. If I remember right, he pointed out that a cocktail had about 350 calories (I’m making up the number — it may have been, but the principle and the error will be the same). Now, he pointed out that it takes 80 calories per gram to melt ice. So, he reasoned, with a bit of ice in your drink, you would be at break even. With less than five grams, less than a quarter ounce, you should be able to drink cocktails all day long and lose weight like crazy. The logic is ironclad, but alas, in practice, it isn’t so. Logic, thus fails us.

Except, of course, that dietary calories are actually measured in kilocalories. So in point of fact, if your drink has 350 calories, that gin and tonic is actually 350,000 calories. So to balance that out, you would need to eat three kilograms of ice (80 calories per gram to melt it and 37 calories per gram to heat it up to body temperature comes out to 117 calories per gram, divided into 350,000 calories yields 2991 grams). So the not-so-intelligent but nevertheless diligent fact-checkers realize that they’re going to need a hell of an ice maker to keep up with their weight loss program.

But this is not meant as a weight-loss guide. I just want to point out two things.

1. Logic does not betray us. We betray logic by feeding in poor assumptions and by failing to reason logically from otherwise good (or bad, in the case of the Nazis) assumptions.
2. It is the belief that logic can betray us that creates the opening for illogic. If you believe that reason can fail, that gut reactions trump logical arguments, that common sense is a better guide, you create the conditions where you don’t ask the right questions, where you let bad answers stand and, ultimately, you make bad decisions.

If your gut reaction tells you something seems wrong, then you need to question it and put it to the test of reason. But here’s the thing: if your gut reaction tells you that something is right, then you need to question it and put it to the test of reason. That’s what separates research from reverie, scholars from pundits, facts from opinion, staring from blinking and, while we’re at it, creationism from science.

The problem with common sense is that it leads to common conclusions. In the best of times, common sense is our bullshit detector, the little spot in our brain that says "That doesn’t seem right." In the worst of times, though, it’s that little spot in the brain that says "That seems right" even when it isn’t.

There is a general bias in academic culture to focus on the fact that one of the things we learn through research is to be skeptical, at least in our fields of expertise. Andrew Pettegrew, a noted Reformation scholar set me straight though. We were at dinner and I started out a story by saying "You’ll never believe this." He interrupted me and said "I’m a scholar. I’m trained to believe the unbelievable." I don’t even remember what story I told, whether it dealt with my research or with something that had happened to me that afternoon, but his comment taught me what was hands down the single most important thing I learned in graduate school.

When I thought about it, I realized that is the more powerful and important skill that we learn through research. It’s not to have our bullshit detectors out constantly. Rather, it’s that we do research and testing and when the testing shows us something unbelievable, we don’t reject it because common sense tells us it isn’t so. We might need a second round of research and testing, more data, better controls. But in the end, it’s not our common sense and skepticism that allows us to think new things in new ways. Those are merely the obstacles that keep us from think foolish things in foolish ways, but nothing interesting, great or innovative ever comes from them.

Uncommon sense, backed with data, lies behind every idea worth propagating.

What happens when I send a note of praise to your company? Does it get handled efficiently and effectively? Does it build my loyalty or destroy it?

I usually refrain from nasty notes. In most cases, I figure I’m better off encouraging continued good service with a letter of praise than sending a nasty letter in a vain attempt to change a place that gives bad service. When I do send a note of thanks by email, where responding is simple, I expect a response. Some companies do a great job. A friend wrote a note to say that Formula 409 had been really effective at cleaning a problem mess and he received a thank you and coupons for all kinds of free product.

So I recently wrote to a company praising their tech support (see below for a copy of the letter). I had some trouble installing a new DSL modem and getting connected. I wanted the tech rep’s supervisor to know that I got some of the best support I’d ever gotten, but there was no email contact for tech support, general contact, or a simple “comments and complaints” address. So I sent it to the only department that had an email address on the website: sales. Now, you would think if anyone knew the importance of customer service it would be the sales department.

To my surprise, I didn’t get any response. How hard would it have been for someone in sales to say “Thanks for contacting us. I’m glad we could help you out. I’ll see that your comments get forwarded to the tech support people”.

So I have two questions:

1. Why didn’t sales respond?
2. Why isn’t there a testimonials@zyxel.com email address?

The sales department’s failure to respond wiped out much of the goodwill created by the amazing technical support rep. If I had sent a complaint, I bet I would have gotten a response, but someone who sends a complaint may have already decided to hate you forever. Recovering the good will of that customer will be hard. If you do it right, that person will be loyal forever, but doing it right takes a lot of work. When someone writes you a letter of praise, though, it’s more like dating. That person is saying “I think I would like a long-term relationship with you.” You don’t have that loyalty yet, though. Think of it as a test, like a first date. Is there someone there? Is there a good response? If not, you’ve squandered that opening the customer offered. That’s what the Zoom modem people did to me.

If you want people to say good things about you, you should make it possible. So why don’t you have an email address for testimonials? You have “support”, and “sales” which should handle problems and complaints. Who do you have assigned to handle praise?

I am not writing for a sales question, but because there was no general contact email address on the contact page.

I just wanted to ask you to forward this to management and especially management in support to say that I was really pleased with the support that I got today on my Zoom 5615A modem. I’ve been tearing my hair out for two days going to a WiFi hotspot and searching the internet, calling my ISP, and made an inquiry to Zoom which got me connected, but then I ran into troubles when I rebooted and couldn’t get back where I was.

This afternoon, I could tell that though the tech was running through a step-by-step protocol, he seemed to know a lot more about modems than just what was written in his protocol. So I asked him a few questions, got him to explain some things so I could better explain my goals and my situation. Deviating far from the script and giving me the more fundamental knowledge I needed to frame my question correctly, he really sorted me out. Everything works now — modem, router, the whole deal. I would also commend him for his patience as I went through this screen and that screen and changed over to another computer.
[other identifying details snipped]

Indexing with Word is pretty good. You go to places in text that you want in the index, enter the text you want to appear in the index, push a button and shazam, an index, all aphabetical and formatted and everything. In theory. But I’ve had a strange problem in Word 2000. I was creating an index and some entries were missing. I went looking and realized they were in the index, but completely out of place. This is what the faulty index looks like when it’s generated by Word. Note the out of order entries in bold.

Floutet, Aima, 294
Floutetta. Vr Monthouz, Aima (dite la Floutetta)
Maître, Louise (fl. d’Ami, 111, 164, 176, 515
Dentrue, Jeanne (fl. d’Emery, 357
Folliet, Pierre, 27

After tearing my hair out for a while I noticed a clue. See it? I finally noticed that the parentheses weren’t closed on the out of order items. When I looked, I realized that the markup in the actual text, that is the entry that is supposed to end up in the index in the first case was

Maître, Louise (fl. d’Ami; fm. de J.-Ja. Bonivard)

So at least in Word 2000, if you try to index text with a semicolon in it, it truncates everything from the semicolon on (the text in bold). That part just gets completely cut off and doesn’t show up in the generated index, but it isn’t entirely discarded. Note in particular what it’s done: it is now indexed alphabetically according to the truncated text that is now invisible. In other words, I tell it to index Maitre, Louise (fl. d’Ami; fm. de J.-Ja. Bonivard), which I expect to appear like that under Mai, but instead it appears as
Maitre, Louise (fl. d’Ami and gets filed under Fm. Very strange behavior. I suppose I could use it to set an alternate order to my index. I can think of hundreds of situations where I would want to do this. Oh wait a minute, maybe not.

I wonder if Microsoft has fixed this in the intervening eight years. Since there’s nothing in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, I’m guessing it’s still not fixed unless there was a total rewrite of indexing and it got fixed by accident, but I don’t think there’s been a total rewrite of Word for a long, long time.

If you arrive here because you had the same problem in a newer version of Word, please leave a comment. For that matter, if you’ve tested it in another version of Word and the problem doesn’t exist, please leave a comment to that effect. Just curious.

Quick test: you are about to ask someone for a favor or to give you something. What’s the magic word?

Without hesitation any child can tell you that it’s please. But in fact there is another magic word. Consider this study reported in Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (p. 4). People standing in line were asked in three different ways whether or not the person asking the question could cut in line. Here is the question, followed by the response rate in each case.

Frankly, I find it sort of surprising that 94% of the people said yes to because I’m in a rush which is barely a reason ("I’m in a rush because my plane leaves in one hour and I need to get this copied before I get to the airport" is a reason). But the amazing thing is that there’s such a huge difference between no because at all and one that adds no information whatsoever (obviously the person wanted to make copies).

It occurred to me that I should subtitle pages "Please read this because I wrote it" as in "The Magic Word (please read this because I wrote it)."