When delayed gratification backfires

Much of life can seem like an endless cage match in which you’re pitted against the forces of delayed gratification. Sticking to a diet or a gym regimen is hard when the payoff may not be seen or felt for months (or decades), while tonight there’s tiramisu on the dessert menu and a Netflix binge awaiting if you park yourself on the couch.
In work that began with her Ph.D thesis nearly 15 years ago, UCLA Anderson’s Suzanne B. Shu has been exploring an opposite behavioral tic: Once we slap a “special” label on something, we do a 180-degree attitude shift and practice too much delayed gratification.
Research suggests that people believe something indulgent will be better enjoyedif saved for a special occasion. The more special the item, the more we’ll hold out for just the right moment to enjoy it. Rather than enjoy the bottle of wine or a free concert pass now, we tuck them away and wait for that imagined perfect moment.
The endless waitSounds benign, right? In an article published in the Journal of Marketing Behavior, Shu and the University of Pennsylvania’s Marissa Sharif make a case that the pursuit of the perfect time to enjoy an indulgence is the enemy of actually enjoying a good experience.
We convince ourselves that the best — the perfect — moment to indulge must be in the future, where our imaginations can conjure up all sorts of notions of an ideal time and setting to enjoy ourselves. So, rather than enjoy the bottle of wine or a free concert pass now, we tuck them away and wait for that imagined perfect moment.
And wait.
Shu and Sharif show that this can backfire.
The chocolates sit unopened until they become unappealing. Or we choose to wait to see if our favorite band will be coming to town, foregoing using our free concert pass on the multiple acts that actually came to town that we would still have enjoyed. Ever found yourself hustling to use reward points or frequent flyer miles before they expire? Have unused gift cards stuffed in your junk drawer, or didn’t use vacation days? You’ve got some future bias issues.
Occasion matchingShu and Sharif find that our compulsion to wait for the perfect situation to consume indulgences, a behavior academics call occasion matching, is in part driven by the fact that we fear the regret of consuming too early and then missing out on the possibility of a better time to consume in the future. Because in the future, everything is possible.
We’re also guilty of overestimating the probability that our dream scenario will actually happen. So, we hold out for a perfect future that rarely (if ever) materializes rather than “settle” for the good (but not perfect) opportunities that are actually grabbable.
Shu and Sharif’s research back what journalists Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher recognized nearly two decades ago was an issue for wine enthusiasts. The couple was often fielding queries from readers of their Wall Street Journal wine tasting columns asking for advice on when they should drink a treasured bottle of wine.
Gaiter and Brecher launched Open That Bottle Night in 2000. As Gaiter recently explained, OTBN is “an impetus for people to enjoy a wine they had been keeping for a special occasion that never arrived.” Pre-committing to that special annual night (the last Saturday in February, if you’re game) breaks the fever to keep holding out for a better time that may fall victim to the wine’s going bad or life’s intervening. Gaiter and Brecher have chronicled many stories of people saving a special bottle to enjoy with a loved one who then dies before that moment ever happens.
Shu and Sharif point out that the more special the origin story, the bigger the pull to wait for a special occasion.
But also: the match that happens, is the match that matters.
Source: University of California at Los Angeles: newsroom.ucla.edu