// posted April 02, 2007 by Lou Schuler

I'm off to a late start this morning. In terms of blog meat, I'm tempted by many, but called by few.

For example, I love this story on the therapeutic powers of dirt. Getting down and dirty boosts your mood, improves your immune system, and gives new resonance to the phrase "happy as a pig in shit."

Then there's the National League Championship Series, Game 8, otherwise known as baseball's opening night. The Mets looked good and the Cards looked bad. It was essentially an even game in terms of the number of runners on base (each team got 13 hits and walks, although one additional Met reached when the Cards' left fielder dropped a ball any of us reading this could've caught). But the Mets managed to score five more runs. The Cards hit into four double plays, lost a runner at third on a failed bunt attempt, and had another thrown out at the plate ... with Albert Freakin' Pujols on deck.

Diamond Mind Baseball, a traditionally accurate computer simulation game, picks the Cards to win 85 games this year and the Mets to win just 82, with the Cards winning their division and the Mets finishing out of the money. But if the Cards have many more games like last night's, they'll be home watching the playoffs this October. And my guess, based on the way the Mets turned what should've been a very close game into a blowout, is that the Mets will be one of the eight teams the 2006 World Champions are destined to watch.

But the tastiest blog meat this Monday morning is a story about politics and the human decision-making process, which, if you'll indulge a digression, has resonance to me in other areas.


Apples, oranges, and rotten peaches


Recently, someone of my acquaintance, a pre-adolescent male, started asking me some tough questions about how to meet, converse with, and, in a perfect world, impress a pre-adolescent female. Anybody who knew me in my youth would tell this pre-adolescent male that he's asking the wrong person.

But I happened to be the only one in the room, so I was obliged to answer. I fumbled around through all the lessons I learned the hard way ("it's not what you say, it's what she hears"; "chicks dig the long ball"; etc.), and finally came up with a riff that went something like this:

"Attraction is really a mystery. It's almost magical when it works out that two people meet and end up liking each other more or less equally. Most of the time, the girls you like won't feel the same way about you. And the girls who do like you won't necessarily be the ones you find attractive. So when it works out and you're attracted to each other, you have to enjoy it while it lasts."

When I repeated that conversation to my wife, she told me it was too negative a message to give to someone contemplating the man-woman thing for the first time. Why scare him off now? There's plenty of time for that later.

So I shifted from probable outcomes to tactics. I emphasized the need to be excellent. If a girl figures out you like her, but isn't sure yet if she likes you, just about anything you do might tip the balance. If you call attention to yourself, make sure it's for something that shows you at your best -- being good, being kind, being funny or proficient. Don't let the first impression be the deal-breaker.

My guess is that he found all that more bewildering than helpful. After all, when you're 11, what can you do that's excellent? How much control do you have over those brief, transient moments when you're in the spotlight?

Fortunately, this morning's Washington Post has the ultimate take on tactics. It's a political story, as I said, but the potential applications are much more universal:

Front-runners are usually focused on racing each other. They often do not realize that when people cannot decide between two leading candidates -- and it doesn't matter whether we are talking about politicians or consumer appliances -- our decision can be subtly swayed by whoever is in third place.


Psychologists call this the decoy effect: In a perfectly rational world, third candidates should only siphon votes away from one or both of the leading contenders. Under no circumstances should they cause the vote share of either front-runner to increase. In the actual world, however, third candidates regularly have the unintended effect of making one of the front-runners look better than before in the minds of undecided voters.


Joel Huber, a Duke University marketing professor, showed how the decoy effect works with restaurants. Huber asked people whether they would prefer to eat at a five-star restaurant that was far away or at a three-star restaurant nearby. As with many choices in life, each restaurant had different advantages. If the better restaurant was also nearby, there would be no dilemma. But the question forced people to compare apples and oranges -- trade off quality against convenience -- which ensured no automatic answer.


The human brain, however, always seeks simple answers. Enter the third candidate. Huber told some people there was also a choice of a four-star restaurant that was farther away than the five-star option. People now gravitated toward the five-star choice, since it was better and closer than the third candidate. (The three-star restaurant was closer, but not as good as the new candidate.)

Here's how I think it could work in our Wonder Years example. It's not an exact comparison, but it exploits a similar decoy effect:

Let's say Boy A likes Girl A. Girl A doesn't yet know this, but occasionally seems to notice Boy A. He catches her looking at him from time to time, and thinks that there might be a chance. The problem is knowing how to get her attention on his own terms.

So Boy A recruits Boy B, a person of lesser stature, intelligence, charm, and/or hygiene. Boy B approaches Girl A, but does so awkwardly, in a way that's guaranteed not to work. Girl A looks for any excuse to get away from Boy B, and Boy A just happens to catch her eye at that moment. She wasn't prepared to make a choice before Boy B commanded her attention, but now that she's on the spot, hey, Boy A is looking damned good.

Would it work? If I'd tried it at that age, probably not. And if anyone else tried it, I get a sneaking suspicion that I'd have been cast as Boy B, wittingly or otherwise.

Still, I'm intrigued by the question: If a teen or preteen really were devious enough or desperate enough to try to set up a favorable-comparison scenario, would the object of his affection fall for it? Would she see through it and be angry? Or would she see through it, but be charmed that he went to so much trouble just for her? Or, in the Hollywood scenario, would she end up falling for Boy B, since he's the plucky underdog?

What do you think?

Tags: Mental Health