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In his book “The Paradox of Choice,” psychologist Barry Schwarz has argued that when people are faced with having to choose one option out of many desirable choices, they will become emotionally bogged-down in the hypothetical trade-offs. Their options and/or the outcomes of their choices, are evaluated in terms of missed opportunities rather than the value of the option pursued. Schwartz maintains that a perseveration on missed opportunities impedes our ability to choose, and lowers the level of satisfaction we experience from our decisions. In other words, when it comes to being happy with what you have, less may actually be more. The mind somewhat reels at how this logic may explain the almost bizarre level of conspicuous consumption that America’s new “mega-rich” are engaged in on a daily basis (Have you seen a picture of Paul Allen’s yacht?)
Peter Todd at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Germany has applied cognitive models to what is called the “37% rule” (otherwise known as the “secretary problem” in the world of logic and heuristics) and the task of human mate selection. The results? Todd's research suggests that your optimum solution is likely to be found within just 10 first dates.
To understand how Todd arrived at this conclusion, we need to start by understanding the "secretary problem." This can be stated as follows (borrowing from my favorite font of wisdom, Wikipedia.org):
• There is a single secretarial position to fill.
• There are n applicants for the position, and this number n is known.
• The applicants can be ranked from best to worst with no ties.
• The applicants are interviewed sequentially in a random order, with each order being equally likely.
• After each interview, the applicant is accepted or rejected.
• The decision to accept or reject an applicant can be based only on the relative ranks of the applicants interviewed so far.
• Rejected applicants cannot be recalled.
• The object is to select the best applicant. The payoff is 1 for the best applicant and zero otherwise.
• Now, the secretary problem has received a lot of attention over the years for one particular reason: The answer, if you follow a couple simple rules, for any group larger than about 100, is always 37%. In other words, if you follow two simple rules, you can always arrive at an optimal selection after reviewing 37% of the applicants. So, what are the rules?
You skip the first n/e applicants, where e is the base of the natural logarithm (Okay, you’re just going to have to take that on faith, or I’m going to have to whip out an equation, and none of us want that.) You only interview applicants who are better than someone you have already interviewed. So, your n/e + 1 interview has to be better than all previous n/e interviews (we’ll come back to the assumption that something like this is knowable in a later blog).
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