The pain of loss is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gain.
When Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published Prospect Theory in 1979, a generation of advertisers mistakenly began to speak to Pain, and to the fear of Loss.
If you frame a choice as “Loss versus Gain,” most people will choose loss avoidance because “losses loom larger than gains.”
But what if you want your audience to embrace the risk of loss? To what motivation, then, do you speak?
Equally unwise is to frame a choice as “Pain versus Pleasure.”
Pain and Pleasure are not as distinct as they may at first seem. You do not recall the event itself, but only your most recent memory of it.
The experience of pain or pleasure during an event is replaced by the memory of that pain or pleasure; how it is perceived afterwards upon recall. Your memory is built upon what you were feeling at the peak point, and how the experience ended.
These are the four peaks that matter:
1. Elevation: a transcendent moment of happiness.
2. Pride: a moment that captures you at your best.
3. Insight: a eureka moment that gives you startling clarity
4. Connection: a moment of knowing you belong.
Don’t speak to the fear of loss – or to the avoidance of pain – unless you are counting on an immediate response from people who are easily alarmed.
If you desire your audience to embrace the possibility of pain and loss, you must reframe the choice as “Fear versus Hope.”
We have lionized feats of bravery and ridiculed acts of cowardice for millennia.
“Are you a frightened, fearful little waste of skin, or will your actions be remembered for generations? Is there anything you care about more than yourself?”
Loss vs. Gain, or Pain vs. Pleasure, can easily be reframed as Fear vs. Hope.
To cause a person to prefer more pain instead of less pain, all you have to do is add a better ending.
“With a beginning that invites each man to assume he’ll be the one who ‘outlives this day, and comes safe home,’ the speech skims over present difficulties to paint an evocative picture of future fellowship and hearty celebration. Instead of focusing on the suffering they’re about to face, the men project themselves years ahead, to the happy time when they will be old and honored, with even the meanest of their number elevated to gentry status as the king’s brothers-in-arms. With this vivid picture of their glorious future, the king moves the troops to conquer their fears and follow him to victory.”
– Virginia Postrel, The Power of Glamour
Virginia Postrell was referring to a famous speech Shakespeare wrote for a play in 1599.
When they were impossibly outnumbered at Agincourt in 1415 and every man thought he was about to die; this is that famous speech given by King Henry V.
HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER
Where is the King?
JOHN, DUKE OF BEDFORD
The King himself is rode to view their battle.
EARL OF WESTMORLAND
Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand.
DUKE OF EXETER
There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
(The King, unseen, approaches from behind and hears… )
EARL OF WESTMORLAND
O that we now had here
But one ten-thousand of those men in England
That do no work today!
KING HENRY V
What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmorland? No, my fair cousin.
If we are mark’d to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more.
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart, his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a’ tiptoe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
“Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,”
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
– William Shakespeare,
Henry V, Act IV, Scene III
Henry V lost fewer than 400 men but killed more than 6,000 Frenchmen at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. He also captured more soldiers than he had in his entire army.
Are you beginning to understand the transformative power of Hope?
Speak to hope – not fear – in the hearts of your audience.
And speak to hope in your own heart as well.
Roy H. Williams
Prospect Theory and Peak-End Theory were established Daniel Kahneman and his research partner, Amos Tversky. Regarding Peak-End Theory, Kahneman says, “Memory was not designed to measure ongoing, or total suffering. For survival, you really don’t need to put a lot of weight on duration of experiences. It is how bad they are and whether they end well, that is really the information you need as an organism.”
Kahneman went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2002. He would doubtless have shared that prize with Amos Tversky but Tversky had passed away and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously.
Kahneman and Tversky were the Lennon and McCartney “odd-couple” of psychology. Like John Lennon, Kahneman was dark and brooding, and like Paul McCartney, Tversky was all light and brightness and found much of life funny. It was this pairing of opposites that made them unstoppable.
Monday Morning Radio! In a private note to the wizard, R.R. Rotbart wrote, “This is one of the most entertaining (and informative) episodes ever. It’s insane.” In the 1980s, electronics retailer “Crazy Eddie” was known for his screaming and thrashing television commercials. Thousands of fans flooded his store openings hoping to get a glimpse of the unhinged pitchman. Eddie Antar — the real Crazy Eddie, not the TV actor who portrayed him in the commercials — was a thieving, lying, cheat who defrauded everyone who ever trusted him, and was ultimately sentenced to eight years in prison. Investigative reporter Gary Weiss has written a page-turning biography and exposé of Eddie Antar, exploring both the genius and the insanity of “Crazy Eddie,” a business crook unlike any other in American history. Where do you go to hear the show? MondayMorningRadio! dotcom
