Should we see âBarbieâ or âOppenheimer?â Why you should always state a preference
The next time a friend asks where you want to grab lunch or which movie youâd rather see, resist the urge to say, âI have no preferenceâyou choose.â
According to a recent study co-authored by Alix Barasch, an associate professor of marketing at the Leeds School of Business, if you claim indifference, your friend believes you actually do have a preference, youâre just not disclosing it. Further, your perceived caginess makes the decision harder for your friendâwho may end up liking you less as a result.
Thatâs a lot to unpack, but think about a time when you were forced to be the decision-maker in this scenario. Did you take your friendâs âno preferenceâ statement at face value?
Generally, âwe donât believe them,â Barasch said. âPeople have very well-established preference structures. Itâs rare that people donât have opinions on things and as a result, we assume that when someone says âno preference,â they do have a preference.â
The motivations behind not stating a preference are generally positive, the researchers found, but this form of decision-delegating can have a negative effect on the relationship.
âWe want to be nice or we really donât care that much, and we think it will make the other personâs life easier,â Barash said. âBut even though weâve all been on both sides, when we think about somebody who has said this to us, we immediately know thatâs annoying.â
The paper, âYou Must Have a Preference: The Impact of No Preference Communication on Joint Decision Making,â was published in June 2022 in the and involved six studies using real-life and hypothetical decisions.
The researchers, who also included Nicole You Jeung Kim of The Faculty of Business at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Yonat Zwebner of the Arison School of Business at Reichman University in Israel; and Rom Y. Schrift of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, highlighted three consequences of no-preference communication.
âFirst, we find very consistently that it makes the decision harder for the person who has to choose,â Barasch said. âThis is counterintuitive because if someone says they donât have a preference and you really believe them, then it should become an individual decision-making processâjust choose what you prefer. But if you donât believe the person, then youâre trying to guess what they want and the choice becomes more difficult.â
Barasch said the second consequence of showing indifference when asked to state a preference has to do with âsocial utility.â
âIt really just means that youâre liked less. People donât like people who arenât honest and donât share what they really feel. If itâs your partner, do you really love them less? No.This is a tiny difference on the margin, but it matters because being annoyed with people has consequences over time,â she said.
Finally, the third consequence is a âlose-lose scenario,â Barasch said, where the decision-maker concludes that the other personâs preference is likely dissimilar to their own and chooses an option that they themselves like less.
But what if you truly donât have a preference?
âWhat Iâd recommend is to express something even if itâs not making the final decision. I think thereâs kind of a middle ground where you can narrow it down to a category or rule out one of three options,â Barasch said. âThe goal here is expressing somethingâgive some signal value that youâre not totally flaky or unable to take any action. You are willing to state an opinion.â
Barasch acknowledged that it can be difficult when there is a power imbalance in the relationshipâfor example, when your boss asks where youâd like to go to lunchâbut she advises offering up something. In her own life, Barasch said sheâs increasingly using the ânarrowing-down tactic.â
Beyond interpersonal relationships, the studyâs implications in the corporate realm could include managers exploring new ways of prompting people to speak up or to do so anonymously. Streaming services could incorporate a feature that facilitates joint decision-making âwithout having to force this awkward exchange,â Barasch said. She added that for companies, the challenge is âhow to get people to express real preferences and real opinions.â
Still hung up on the finding that youâll be liked less for refusing to state a preference? The researchers tested whether the feelings of dislike come from the decision difficulty or the disbelief.
âIt comes from the disbelief,â Barasch said. âIt comes from the suspicion that youâre not revealing your true preferences, not from the difficulty of making the decision. Whatâs good about that is if you express no preference and it comes across genuinely, then yes, the personâs decision is still more difficult but it doesnât make them like you less.â