{"id":5202,"date":"2026-06-15T19:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewendymethod.com\/why-do-i-like-what-i-like\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T16:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T13:54:51","slug":"why-do-i-like-what-i-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/?p=5202","title":{"rendered":"Why do I like what I like?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
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Illustration by Tim Bouckley \/ Ikon Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\n\t\t\tWork & Economy\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\tWhy you like what you like\t<\/h1>\n

\n\t\t\tYour preferences aren\u2019t as original as you may think, says behavioral scientist\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tA series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The Business School\u2019s Michael I. Norton<\/a> has explored the influence of social norms on individual choices in his research and in the books “Happy Money” and “The Ritual Effect.” We asked him about the process behind personal preferences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our preferences vary from category to category. Music preferences are developed in the teen years. Typically, people think whatever music they were listening to from age 16 to 20 is the best music automatically, because that\u2019s when they were forming their identity. But your favorite car brand doesn\u2019t develop until you\u2019re out there shopping for cars. So when the thing hits you that you need in your life, you start to develop preferences at that time. At the same time, your parents\u2019 preferences massively influence your own, like the brand of spaghetti sauce you use is highly correlated with the one your parents used.<\/p>\n

We like to think that our attitudes<\/em> lead to our product choices, which is true sometimes, but it\u2019s also the case sometimes that the product choices lead to the attitudes after the fact. And we\u2019re not really aware of when that\u2019s happening to us. For example, everyone in Manhattan has their opinion about the best pizza place. And it turns out that it\u2019s almost always within walking distance of where they live. So is it the best pizza place? Or did they randomly end up in that spot?<\/p>\n

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We like to think that our attitudes<\/em> lead to our product choices, which is true sometimes, but it\u2019s also the case sometimes that the product choices lead to the attitudes after the fact.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s totally clear that it\u2019s pretty random, but that\u2019s not how we think about what we like, because we think we like what we like, and we come up with reasons after the fact. <\/p>\n

Wine connoisseurs, for example, will try to drink every wine to develop their palate. So you could say, well, if you develop expertise, then you\u2019re more likely to have it be your true preference. But it\u2019s still out of a set. And things like the price of a wine dramatically influence your views. So even with drinking all the wines, you\u2019re still getting all these signals about how good it is. <\/p>\n

Online, it\u2019s easier than it used to be for companies to figure out our personalities and target consumers based on that. We tend to think of our social media as reflecting who we are, which means it\u2019s very different if a brand pops up on your Facebook or Instagram page, because you are more likely to think, \u201cOh, I like this part of who I am.\u201d Whereas if I just throw something randomly at you on the radio, well, \u201cHold on a second, maybe that\u2019s not something I like, it\u2019s just because I happen to be listening right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the things that AI can do is pull out associations that you wouldn\u2019t otherwise pull out. Marketers already knew that if you were buying hot dog buns, you were probably also interested in hot dogs. But there are things that are correlated with each other for a reason we can\u2019t necessarily put our finger on, but that can be pulled out of the data. And that means that we\u2019re getting more and more personalized ads and brands thrown at us. <\/p>\n

To like something organically, without influence from companies or your social network, is really hard to do. You\u2019re going to see what your friends wear \u2014 they don\u2019t have to say, \u201cBuy this brand,\u201d but you\u2019re going to see it and you\u2019re exposed to it. The fact that fashion differs from country to country is because you look locally and you pick something out of the set that\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

We are able to segment down to very specific preferences and it\u2019s much easier to have subcultures than it used to be, but that\u2019s still a community and we reinforce each other. Even with something like \u201cnormcore,\u201d dressing normal and boring is an aesthetic. You\u2019re still choosing pants from a retailer and in the end, you are reflecting your preferences and something about yourself.<\/p>\n

At the same time, so many categories are different group to group. We share this one with our parents, and we share this one with this other set of people, and then everybody\u2019s still drinking bottled water from the same three brands. So it\u2019s not types of people who all buy the same things. It\u2019s really across product categories and<\/em> across people. We have all these different identities that we\u2019re expressing in all sorts of different ways. <\/p>\n

As for how our tastes might change, economists would think of it in terms of switching costs. So is it easy or hard to change the preference. For example, going from a PC to a Mac, you can do it obviously, they\u2019re both computers, but there\u2019s some switching costs, because it\u2019s a different interface and you have to relearn something. Whereas with shirts, I know how to put all the shirts on. So switching costs to another brand are very, very low. I might as well jump over to another brand, or pizza, or whatever it might be. But things where it\u2019s hard to move from one to the other are where people are more likely to stay where they are.<\/p>\n

As told to Anna Lamb, Harvard Staff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Illustration by Tim Bouckley \/ Ikon Images Work & Economy Why you like what you like Your preferences aren\u2019t as original as you may think, says behavioral scientist\u00a0 July 9,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9019,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202\/revisions\/9019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}