Mental Anchors Burden Us All

It’s interesting how people get stuck on one thing or another.

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

I bring this up both because I’m reading the book I mention below and because of a recent experience.

I was getting new lenses for my glasses. There, I even did it; you’ll see what I mean in a minute. The thing to remember here is that I am blind in my left eye. I don’t have difficulty seeing; I’m not just saying I am legally blind. I can’t see a damn thing.

My right eye had changed and I needed a new prescription in that lens. The other lens doesn’t matter. As I was ordering the lens, I noticed the optometrist was writing up a prescription for both lenses. I told her that I only needed the one lens. Here’s the conversation as I remember it.

“I only need the one lens, I can’t see out of the left eye.”

The optimistic optometrist said, “Well we like to do both lenses so that your vision balances out.”

“I am blind in my left eye. I can’t see anything. What are you balancing?”

The obtuse, yet sweet, optometrist said, “Well we like to balance them out so they look the same.”

“I don’t care if they look the same. The only time I wear them is at home. I only want one lense. If you do both lenses, don’t I have to pay for both lenses?”  The lenses I had were the fancy ones with no-line bifocals, and the “get dark by themselves” thing, and they contained this super safe and expensive plastic.

The ocular assistant said, “Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h, I see. You just want one lense.”

And the day was saved. Until I got the glasses, and the lens factory (or whatever you call it) sent out glasses with new lenses in both sides.

At least I didn’t have to pay for both.

The optometrist and the lens people were just doing their jobs. I tell the story because it strikes me that there are so many things our little brains just get used to doing over and over and over.

What I am reading is Dan Ariely‘s informative book,

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Reading it has helped me understand some of the really dopey things people, including and maybe especially, me.

One of the behaviors he spends a lot of time on is something called anchors. Briefly, anchors are price points that we become enamored with and have a hard time letting go of.

If you have ever heard someone say, “Do you remember when gas was only…?”, you’ve witnessed an anchor. My story above — those people were operating on anchors, arbitrary (or even not so arbitrary) decisions made long ago.

At some point, we experiences ‘something;’ based on this experience, we made an arbitrary decision — This is how much a gallon of gas is worth. Nowadays, usually it is not that price. As I go down a street not too far from my house, there is an old gas station that went out of business. From the looks of things, it went out very quickly. On the sign in front, the numbers still hang, saying $1.09 a gallon. Wow.

We all get stuck on various things. In my story above, the astute reader may have noticed that I even said “getting lenses for my glasses.”

Change is difficult!