Capuchin Monkeys : The Paradox of Choice

Possibility of choosing from myriad alternatives is said to be the ultimate gift of modern times. Consumer freedom & availability of choices are held to be the bedrock of happiness. Freedom without choice is like heaven with cavorting nymphets and sweet nectar – but very little to choose beside. Choice without freedom, you guessed it right, is like hell with many ways to expiate sin – but no freedom to escape. What then freedom with choice be? Must be the ultimate utopia! It turns out that the answer is not so straight forward.

When there is a choice and preference is made favouring an option, there is perforce rejection of one or more alternatives. The dilemma is just not confined to the process of preference making, but continues to resonate well past the judgment moment, especially when there are at least a few alternatives of almost equal merit. The concept of self worth informs most of us that we are rational, competent and intelligent people. When we make a decision, may be in choosing a job, buying a car or selecting a holiday destination, it may well happen that we end up feeling later it was a bad decision. Self worth & bad choice then end up clashing in our minds creating a sense of anxiety or making us loose our sense of wellbeing. Each militates against the other. If we are smart how did we end up making such a stupid mistake? If a mistake is made, how could we call ourselves smart? Psychologists have a term for this phenomenon – Cognitive Dissonance. Usually the resolution is reached by discarding one of the two notions and replacing it with a compatible one.

When the burden of evidence starts weighing against our worldview or long held beliefs or notions, the tension reduction is reached through a process which we all recognize as ‘rationalization’. Since the hypothesis was first put forward some 50 years ago, psychologists have made cognitive dissonance one of the most-studied mental phenomena around. And one thing is abundantly explored in this research: humans are equipped with a variety of dissonance-reducing mechanisms that enable us to live with our decisions, our actions and, ultimately, ourselves. Politicians often do seemingly irreconcilable flip-flops with consummate ease, which leave us utterly bewildered. Yet they find innovative justifications for their behaviour. Though others see their behaviour as self serving manipulation, it also vouches for the extraordinary flexibility of their dissonance conciliation mechanisms.

An extreme case of cognitive dissonance can be seen in a strange behaviour Psychologists call Stockholm syndrome. In the summer of 1973, four hostages were taken in a botched bank robbery at Kreditbanken in Stockholm, Sweden. At the end of their captivity, six days later, the hostages actively resisted rescue. They refused to testify against their captors and instead raised money for culprits’ legal defense. When a captive cannot escape and is isolated and threatened with death, but is shown token acts of kindness by the captor a psychological shift takes root in about 3 to 4 days. Faced with such harsh contrast, the victim discards the initial antipathy felt towards his captor and begins to sympathize with the tormentor. A strategy of trying to keep the captor happy in order to stay alive follows as a result. Cognitive dissonance between captor is a criminal & the fact he is keeping me alive is resolved by concluding captor must be good. Although this is a rather dramatic example, many other routine situations have been recognized as such. Abused Children, Battered/Abused spouses, Prisoners & Cult Members can find mention here.

Until now this was all confined to adult humans. Only adult humans were considered to be cognitively enabled – to be able to reason, to intuit, perceive, and to be self aware. Searching for the origins of cognitive dissonance, Louisa Egan and others have recently found interesting evidence of it in Preschoolers and Capuchin Monkeys. Each child was asked to select from a group of animal stickers the three it most preferred. Out of these three, randomly selected two were given to the child and it was asked to choose only one to take home. That done, the child was asked to choose between the discard and the one that was held back from the three. Research team found a regular pattern of held-back sticker getting selected over the discard. They took it as a sign of ‘cognitive dissonance reducing mechanism’ (CDRM) at work. Explanation goes somewhat like this. Let the 3 preferred stickers be randomly labeled A, B & C. Child has shown preference neutrality among A, B & C. If now C is held back and choice is forced between A & B, then it would result in cognitive dissonance. The earlier perceived equality between A & B is violated here. Child, let us say, chooses B, then it has obviously now concluded that A is somehow inferior to B to settle the dissonance. If now a second choice is forced between A & C, then it is easier to choose C over A - an earlier discard – to avoid consequential dissonance. In case of Capuchin monkeys, they were given sweets of different colours, and since they cannot follow instructions, their preferences were deduced based on the time they took to retrieve a sweet of a particular colour from a test chamber. In both the cases there was a marked preference for ‘held-back’ over ‘discard’ than could be explained by mere chance. This clearly suggests that the basic machinery underlying cognitive dissonance, and the tools to make it vanish, are of evolutionary vintage, and emerge relatively early in development (at the least, they don’t require extensive experience in weighing up preferences and taking decisions).

What role does CDRM play in our lives? One view suggests that it helps avoid the mental paralysis likely to result from unresolved competing cognitive responses. Resonance for this is best exemplified in Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna corrects the paralysis of Arjun on the Kurukshetra battlefield by diminishing all cognitive precepts except one –that of Kshaatra Dharma. Another prefers CDRM’s role as the preserver of ‘wholesome self’ – a self portrait of rational, competent, morally upright person. But this leads to another difficulty in the context of the above research findings by Egan et al published this month. Either CDRM is far less sophisticated than previously held and is mechanistically deterministic or the Capuchin monkeys would have to be credited with the notion of self conception.

To resolve this dichotomy we need to take refuge in another evolutionary notion, the notion of exaptation. For example, feathers might have originally arisen in the context of natural selection for insulation, and only later were they co-opted for flight. In this case, the general form of feathers is an adaptation for insulation and an exaptation for flight. Similarly it may be argued that CDRM is an adaptation for choosing and exaptation for preserving wholesomeness of self.

Just as this begins to sound like the end of CDRM tunnel, here is the counterpoint. Psychologist Barry Schwartz has studied the process of selection when say a modern consumer walks along the isle of a giant mall. Here, stacks upon stacks of products are arrayed in confetti of choices, all screaming at the hapless consumer, ‘pick me up’. More the choices, greater should be the happiness. Since we have choice, we have greater anticipation of what we are going to get out of it. We therefore set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and agonize over what we have given up rather than focusing on what we have chosen. Barry challenges a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz's estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. Once upon a time in India there were only 2 kinds of cars, Fiat and Ambassador (well, there was a 3rd – Standard Herald). One’s wallet size decided which car one bought. One may have cursed the maker for small irritants like everything else making noise except the horn, but one never doubted one’s choice. Today, there is plethora of gleaming new offerings available in multiple combinations. Hatchback or sedan, ZXi or VXi, petrol or diesel, Tall boy or squat boy, alloy wheels, sunroof, fog lamps, ABS, SUV or MAV; the list just goes on and on. At the end of much deliberation a worthy is chosen from among the huge offering and as one is driving out in the new bird, an invidious doubt crops up – Did one make the right choice? Or should I have gone in for that other beauty as someone was suggesting. Today all cars on offer are far superior to the earlier twin offerings, but one’s happiness is shortchanged nonetheless & and one blames oneself for this predicament. This underscores Barry’s central point : Too many choices undermine happiness.

While CDRM has equipped us to deal with choice, too many choices are undermining the evolutionary advantage.

Take II: General Musharraf came to power 8 years ago in a coup avowedly for removing elected but corrupt and discredited PM Sharif. Come 911 and Bush co-opted the General in his ‘War on Terror’, nukes and dictatorship notwithstanding. The respectability this alliance bestowed afforded Musharraf the latitude to see himself as the pillar of Pakistan – defender of its society and the rule of law. General quietly faded away and President Musharraf assumed his rightful place. Fast forward to November 07 and we find the Pakistan Supreme Court about to disrobe the President of that veneer of respectability. Result is cognitive dissonance. Solution is found in a way as it has always been. President is booted out and in walks the General triumphantly.