Silly Humans: Better-looking products work better...

I was golfing last weekend with my future brother-in-law, and he was disappointed to find that his relatively new, gonna-fix-my-short-game putter had been (gasp!) scratched up a bit. He whined to his wife, speculating about a pending putter purchase, when she pointed out...

The Logical Truth: Little scratches won't affect the function of the putter.

To which he responded with....

The Psychological Truth: When it looks better, it works better. He explained the whole process: he's about to make a putt, he reaches for his club, sees those nasty little scratches, and is suddenly in a bad mood because of them. Now his mental game is off; he's not concentrating on the putt. This is how three- and four-putt holes are born.

Does this sound about right? Does your music sound worse coming from a scratched iPod? Do you not ski or snowboard as well in an out-of-style jacket? Does your dirty car make you a more irritable driver?

Yep - it may be silly, but it's real.

2 comments:

Anthony said...

Maintaining a clean, aesthetically pleasing classroom is deemed so important that it is a "domain" in which teachers have to prove themselves.

I've never done any official research, but the kids don't seem to care.

Dave Gustafson said...

Sounds a lot like the "Broken Windows" theory of law enforcement: if you keep a place looking nice, potential criminals (or troublesome kids) will perceive that their mischief won't be tolerated. So I agree that one wouldn't notice whether or not the kids "care" - it'd be deeper than caring, on a subconscious level. Ah, applied mind tricks!