The answer to faulty commitment?
I may have run into the answer to many of our questions. Perhaps it's not the answer, but to me, it's something close enough to it. I've been meaning to share this with everyone for some t</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">ime.
An excerpt taken from an article in Elle UK November 2009 called "Commitment & Men: The Truth."
MIT behavioral scientist performed this test.
"...The participants [men] all sat at computer screens then with each one showing three doors that they could click on. Each door delivered a different cash reward, paid out in real money, when you clicked on it, and each player had a total of 100 clicks. So the best course of action was obvious: quickly find the door that paid the biggest reward, then use up the rest of your clicks on it."
"...Ariely added a twist: if a player didnt click on a particular door...it began to shrink, before eventually vanishing. And thats when something strange started happening. People rushed to click on the shrinking doors to stop them [from] disappearing, even though they would make less money. It was a perfect demonstration of human irrationality in action. The only point of the game was to make as much cash as possible-and yet people were so panicked by the idea of losing one of the doors that they close to make less money, simply to maintain the feeling of keeping their options open."
-J.