Summary: Consuming familiar items in unconventional ways can renew the pleasure they provide, new research suggests.
Source: The Conversation.
The quick fade of pleasure
It happens almost instantly. You open a bottle of your favorite drink, take a sip, and the flavor is intense and delightful. After a few more sips, however, the taste seems to fade into the background. The same pattern often follows a big purchase: a new car or a gadget brings a surge of happiness at first, but after a short while it becomes ordinary.
This decline in pleasure is called hedonic adaptation or satiation. It affects many of the things that make us happy. If you reflect on items, experiences, and routines that once excited you, you can probably recall how much less satisfying they feel now.
Is there a way to recover some of that initial enjoyment without constantly replacing what we already have?
Research findings: novelty in how we consume
In a series of studies soon to be published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers examined whether changing the way people interact with familiar items can increase enjoyment. The results suggest that consuming things in unconventional ways—introducing novelty in the method rather than the item itself—can reduce or even prevent the usual decline in pleasure.
The art of paying attention
One experiment involved 68 participants who ate popcorn. Half of the group ate the popcorn in the usual way, kernel by kernel. The other half used chopsticks. Both groups were instructed to eat slowly, yet the chopstick group reported substantially greater enjoyment. The likely explanation is attention: when an action or object seems new, people focus on it more closely, and increased attention amplifies pleasure.
People often seek variety to avoid boredom—buying new items or switching experiences to capture that fresh feeling. But replacing possessions can be costly, impractical, or extreme in some contexts. These findings point to a simpler alternative: change how you use or experience what you already have.
Make each sip count
Another experiment involved 300 people consuming water under different conditions. Participants first brainstormed unconventional ways to drink water—suggestions ranged from using a martini glass to mimicking a cat’s lick. Then they took five sips and rated enjoyment after each sip. One group drank normally every time, a second group used the same unconventional method for all sips, and a third group used a different unconventional method on each sip.
Participants who changed their drinking method for each sip reported the highest and most sustained enjoyment. While enjoyment declined across sips for the groups that kept their method constant, the varied-method group avoided this decline and even experienced stronger enjoyment toward the end of the session. In other words, varying how you consume can preserve or restore the initial pleasure ordinarily lost to familiarity.
Practical implications for consumers and businesses
This approach offers a practical solution to the near-universal problem of satiation: if you can discover new, meaningful ways to interact with something, you may keep enjoying it longer. The idea is already reflected in some commercial settings. Restaurants and experience-based businesses experiment with presentation and context—dining in the dark, themed settings, or unusual presentation styles—to create novelty and capture attention.
Online communities also highlight creative service approaches, from quirky plating to imaginative presentation. However, novelty often has a shelf life, and the initial innovation can wear off. Our research suggests businesses could gain more lasting benefits by designing ways for customers to vary how they consume the same product, rather than repeatedly delivering ever-new items.
Consider a pizza restaurant: diners usually eat each slice in the same way, which may make the last slice less enjoyable. Because people’s memory of an experience is strongly influenced by its ending, encouraging customers to try different ways of eating each slice—folded, with a fork and knife, with chopsticks, while blindfolded, or any playful variation—could keep enjoyment high through the final bite.
Conclusion
Variety is not only important in what we choose but also in how we choose to experience it. Introducing small, unconventional changes in consumption rituals can sharpen attention and maintain or restore pleasure. For both individuals looking to get more from everyday pleasures and businesses seeking to enhance customer experience, varying the method of consumption is an accessible and effective strategy.
Source: Robert W. Smith & Ed O’Brien — The Conversation
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image adapted from The Conversation news release.
The Conversation. “Why You Should Eat Popcorn with Chopsticks: Psychological Tricks to Make Life More Enjoyable.” NeuroscienceNews. June 18, 2018.