Why Snobbery Tastes So Sweet
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Now there’s proof that snobby, shallow morons have more fun.
But of course you knew that already.
The proof comes from Standford’s Graduate School of Business, where Professor Baba Shiv decided to study the effects of price on pleasure: If something costs more, does it actually make one happier? (And if it does, why is my idea of heaven a giant 99-cent store?)
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Mr. Shiv and his co-author from the California Institute of Technology already knew, of course, that price affects perception. A $30 shirt just does not have the same panache as a $300 one. (Or, back to me, a $3 shirt with just a slight irregularity. Woo-hoo! Love it.)
Anyway, what Mr. Shiv wanted to know was, “Is it possible that price could impact the actual pleasure that the brain experiences?” To find out, he invited 20 (very eager) participants to come taste an array of wines.
Actually, it was just three wines, but they were presented as if they were a whole bunch of different ones, ranging in price from $5 to $90 a bottle.
The participants sat with their heads in a special kind of MRI machine and just before each sample was squirted into their mouths they were told, “This is from the $45 bottle,” or “This is from the $10 bottle”— whatever. Squirt.
And?
The part of the brain that registers taste was not affected by the prices at all. But the medial orbitofrontal cortext, aka the pleasure center? The more the wine “cost,” the more that part lit up like a Christmas tree. If it was sitting next to you at a restaurant, it would lift its glass and declare, “Superb!”
Which, of course, is what happens all the time at restaurants and makes the rest of us roll our eyes and wonder, “Does that guy really detect a hint of oak or is he just full of it?”
Now it turns out: It doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s thrilled.
Of course, Mr. Shiv hastened to explain that these were not wine connoisseurs in his experiment. In fact, it may have been their ignorance that made them so much happier when they thought they were drinking something special. “Whenever people are less confident in their own ability to judge quality, they tend to rely more on price,” a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati, James Kellaris, said. This holds true whether they’re trying to judge cars or house paint or liquor.
The only problem is that, often enough, price really doesn’t correlate with quality. (Just ask a 99-cent store vet.)
(Or maybe don’t.)
“In every single article in Consumer Reports, the surprise ending is that the most expensive item is not necessarily the highest in quality or delivers the most satisfaction,” Mr. Kellaris said.
What the uber-rational Consumer Reports has yet to realize, I guess, is that even if something expensive happens to be a piece of garbage (or a glass of rotgut), it can still deliver huge heaps of satisfaction simply because it cost a lot, or at least is something your friends don’t have.
That’s why snobbery — the joy of lording something over someone else — is not going to go away anytime soon. Especially when it comes to wine.
“The great thing about wine and snobbery is that whenever you have something of uncertain value, snobbery kicks in,” the man who wrote the book “Snobbery,” Joseph Epstein, said. This applies to everything from higher education to romantic partners. “It’s like making love to a duchess,” Mr. Epstein said. “Is it really better? It’s gotta be a lot better! True, she fell asleep in the middle. But she’s a duchess!”
While the people in the wine experiment weren’t actually lording anything over anyone else, their pleasure centers nakedly rejoiced just knowing they were drinking something most people couldn’t afford.
Amazing how easy it is to make us happy.
Annoying how much easier it is if you’re a snobby, shallow moron.
(Or live near a 99-cent store.)
Hear the “Lenore Galore” podcast:
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