Why are unreachable grapes, sour?

• Why is it better to agree with your boss than to disagree?
• Why do testers make a lot of noise even for small defect?
• Why should you criticise a movie that you don't want to go?
• Why are unreachable grapes, sour?
• Why do bosses command rather than consult?
• Why should you openly ask for a raise or a promotion?
• Why should you always ask for a discount on a purchase?
• ........... and the list goes on.

I am sure you might know the answer to all of these almost by intuition. There are many more simple scenarios that your brain automatically figures out. Actually all the questions above are similar and the answer to all of them are, well, kind of same. Before we move further, let us look at another scenario. Suppose you have a chocolate bar and two fighting kids. You have to divide the chocolate between them so that none of them accuse you of being biased. And yes, you do not have a tape or anyway to measure it. How would you divide to avoid being biased? Pause for a moment and think.

The best way is to ask one kid to divide and ask the other to choose. Time for another question - which role would you have preferred if given a choice - the one who divides or the one who chooses? If you have made up your mind let us analyse the payoff. If both of the fighting kids are rational they would like to have a bigger slice of the chocolate. Most people actually choose to divide. Did you choose the same? If you did, then you did not think hard enough about the problem. 

Let us assume that you are one of the kids who chose to divide the chocolate. What are payoffs for you? If you divide equally then you get exact equal amount, but if your division is skewed, then be sure that you will get the smaller chunk as the other kid would definitely go for the bigger one. Your payoff table would look like the one below. The numbers here represent, 0 for neutral, +1 for advantage and -1 for a disadvantage.

Equal Division	Unequal Division
0	-1

Your best case when you choose to divide is to get the equal half, but if you falter, then you end up with a loss, in this case, with a smaller piece of chocolate. Yes you are now thinking right. Choosing is actually better than splitting. Let us see the payoffs are when you decide to choose instead.

Equal Division	Unequal Division
0	+1

Your worst case, when you choose, is that you get exact half the size of the chocolate. And if the other kid divides unequally, then you can grab the larger piece, which is your best case scenario. 

And herein lies the answer to all of the questions above. 

Suppose your boss wants you to do a work in a particular way. But since you too have an evolved primate brain, you think that your approach is a better one. What should you do? Of course you try to convince your boss that your idea is better. Remember though that humans do not take suggestions kindly, especially when it contradicts with their own beliefs. Maybe you are are not persuasive enough. So what should you do? First, you make a mental payoff table, like the one above and decide. 

If your project is successful, then your payoff looks like this

Successful	Unsuccessful
0	-1

Since you took the project at your own risk, your best payoff is neutral (or 0). The onus lies on you to make it successful. And if the plan did not work, then you have a lot to lose. Your job for example. Of course if your boss is too generous, then maybe it could be a +1 and a -1 payoff instead of 0 and -1, but that is unlikely most of the time as human emotions come into play. A person who was told that his idea is inferior would not usually forget and forgive. Let us assume that you now play along with your boss's idea. The payoff looks something like this.

Successful	Unsuccessful
+1	0

That is because if it is a success you both can take the credit and your job is safe. It is safe even when the project is unsuccessful. After all this crappy idea was your boss's.

Economists call these numbers (0, -1 and +1) as utility values. Utility values are numbers that economists assign to someone's satisfaction, success or happiness. They call its unit - utils. It is quite arbitrary though and depends upon the individual. Something that is 10 utils for me might be 100 for you, or maybe even 0. Our brains constantly make decisions based upon what these util values are. Basically they are a way to prioritize actions in our brain and to make an "either-or" decision when you have to choose just one or a few items from a given set of choices. For a dog, a bone could be 100 utils and a mobile maybe 0, so given a choice it will pick up the bone. Sometimes the utils can be directly correlated with the monetary value. Happiness too. You might assign more utils to something that your spouse doesn't, and that my friend is the cause of all household tensions. That is why some prefer sitting at home watching TV and drinking beer rather than going out shopping. I'll stop here because I think you got the point.

Our brain has an inbuilt reward mechanism - serotonin. When you are happy be sure that your brain has pushed a lot of it in your body. But when you do not get something that your desire, your brain becomes grumpy and sucks serotonin out of your system. But most of us know how to get around it by tricking the brain. I have seen people betting small on winning of a rival team. Reason - if your team loses, you win the money (utils) and when your team wins you are happy (more utils). This is really a win-win situation. But remember you bet amount should not be large to disrupt the reward mechanism. Now we know why some people criticize a movie beforehand when forced to watch. If the movie is good +1, if bad 0, because you can always tell others that you told them ahead that the movie sucks.

When you find a grape hanging that is unreachable, your brain can conjure up a theory that the grapes anyway were sour and would have caused your serotonin level to drop. Thank god, that you did not get them. Yeah it is same reason why you are not the VP of your company. That guy has no personal life, and look at you - at least you don't work Sundays and you prefer family over work. See, your brain knows how to maximize your utils or serotonin, whatever nomenclature you prefer.

If your HR tells you that the last person who left the organization left it for "better prospects" and not because your company sucks, you finally know why he has done so. When I hear it, I simply smile at my HR for the reasons other than her being pretty. With that I will leave a few questions unanswered. After all, you too deserve the pleasure of a serotonin push when you have arrived at the solution yourself.