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1、Door closer, are you?1The next time youre deciding betweenrivaloptions, one which is primary and the other which issecondary, ask yourself this question: What wouldXiang Yudo?2Xiang Yu was a Chineseimperialgeneral in the third century BC who took his troops across theZhang Riveron araidinto enemyter
2、ritory.To his troops astonishment, he ordered their cooking pots crushed and their sailing ships burned.3He explained that he was imposing on them a necessity for attaining victory over theiropponents.What he said was surelymotivating, but it wasnt really appreciated by many of hisloyalsoldiers as t
3、hey watched theirvesselsgo up in flames.But thegeniusof General Xiang Yusconvictionwould bevalidatedboth on the battlefield and in modern social science research.General Xiang Yu was a rareexceptionto the norm, aveteranleader who was highly respected for his manyconquestsand who achieved thesummitof
4、 success.4He is featured inDan Arielysenlighteningnewpublication,PredictablyIrrational, a fascinatinginvestigationof seemingly irrational human behavior, such as the tendency for keeping multiple options open.Most people cantmarshalthe will for painful choices, not even students at theMassachusetts
5、Institute of Technology (MIT), where Dr. Ariely teachesbehavioraleconomics.In an experiment that investigated decision-making, hundreds of students couldnt bear to let their options vanish, even though it was clear they wouldprofitfrom doing so.5The experimentrevolvedaround a game that eliminated th
6、e excuses we usually have for refusing to let go.In the real world, we can always say, Its good topreserveour options.Want a good example?A teenager is exhausted from soccer, ballet, piano, and Chinese lessons, but her parents wont stop any one of them because they might come in handy some day!6In t
7、he experimentsessions, students played a computer game that provided cash behind three doors appearing on the screen.The rule was the more money you earned, the better player you were, given a total of 100 clicks.Every time the students opened a door by clicking on it, they would use up one click bu
8、t wouldnt get any money.However, each subsequent click on that door would earn afluctuatingsum of money, with one door always revealing more money than the others.The important part of the rule was each door switch, though having no cash value, would also use up one of the 100 clicks.Therefore, the
9、winning strategy was to quickly check all the doors and keep clicking on the one with the seemingly highest rewards.7While playing the game, students noticed amodifiedvisualelement: Any door left un-clicked for a short while would shrink in size and vanish.Since they already understood the game, the
10、y should have ignored the vanishing doors.Nevertheless, they hurried to click on the lesser doors before they vanished, trying to keep them open.As a result, they wasted so many clicks rushing back to the vanishing doors that they lost money in the end.Why were the students so attached to the lesser
11、 doors?They would probablyprotestthat they wereclingingto the doors to keep future options open, but, according to Dr. Ariely, that isnt the truefactor.8Instead of the excuse to maintain future options open,underneathit all the students desire was to avoid the immediate, thoughtemporary, pain of wat
12、ching options close.Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a big price to avoid the emotion of loss, Dr. Ariely says.In the experiment, the price was easily measured in lost cash.In life, the corresponding costs are often less obvious such as wasted time
13、or missed opportunities.9Sometimes these doors are closing too slowly for us to see them vanishing, Dr. Ariely writes. We may work more hours at our jobs without realizing that the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away.10So, what can be done torestorebalance in our lives?One answer, D
14、r. Ariely says, is toimplementmore prohibitions on overbooking.We can work to reduce options on our own,delegatingtasks to others and even giving away ideas for others to pursue.He points to marriage as an example, In marriage, we create a situation where we promise ourselves not to keep options ope
15、n. We close doors and announce to others weve closed doors.11Since conducting the door experiment, Dr. Ariely says he has made a conscious effort to lessen his load.He urges the rest of us to resign from committees,pruneholiday card lists, rethink hobbies and remember the lessons of door closers lik
16、e Xiang Yu.12In other words, Dr. Ariely is encouraging us todiscardthose things that seem to haveoutwardmerit in favor of those things that actually enrich our lives.We are naturallyprejudicedto believe that more is better, but Dr. Arielys research provides adoseof reality that strongly suggests otherwise.13What price do we pay for
