Page 134 - Hard Goals

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of the experiment was basically the same, but some ingredi-
ents were adapted to Italian tastes (pepperoni and pineapple
were replaced by Italian hot sausage and Italian vegetables) and
the Italian students were also asked to choose ingredients for
a salad. (Salad, huh? There’s probably some kind of a healthy
lifestyle lesson in there somewhere.)
Now the Subtracting Condition is kind of like taking own-
ership of the pizza. You’ve mentally pictured this pizza with all
of its ingredients; as far as your brain is concerned, that’s your
pizza right there. If somebody tried to take those ingredients
away, your brain would be like, “Hey, those are my peppers,
pepperoni, and sausage!” Even if you don’t really love peppers
or sausage, your brain is saying, “Those are mine, I own them,”
and thus is a lot less willing to let them go. But in the Adding
Condition, all you really own is the basic cheese pizza. Those
extra ingredients are not mentally owned by your brain, you
haven’t pictured them on your pizza yet, so you just don’t care
nearly as much if they end up on your pizza or not.
The experiment confi rmed this thinking. In Iowa, students
in the Adding Condition only ended up with 2.7 ingredients on
average. But the Subtracting Condition students, who mentally
owned those ingredients and thus were much less willing to give
them up, averaged about 5.3 ingredients. If you started with
the “super” loaded pizza and had to subtract ingredients, you
would spend about $1.29 more for your pizza than people who
started with just a cheese pizza. The Italian experiment showed
the same thing, and even on their salad choices, if they started
with the loaded salad they ended up with twice as many top-
pings. (Yes, every salesperson and marketer on the planet should
be glued to this page right now.)