I'm ashamed to admit that I got sucked into this season of The Bachelor. This is in spite of my general hatred for "reality" television and my particular hatred for anything that goes so blatantly out of its way to reinforce gender stereotypes.
My good friend Emmett recently asked me just what I was so fascinated by. At the time, the best I could do was lean on the old cliché of the train wreck you can't look away from. But as the season finale fades into the sunset - along with Brad and Emily's romance - I think I've finally put my finger on why the show was able to hold my attention. I couldn't stop asking myself, "why are all these women so smitten with a guy who is clearly emotionally underdeveloped and kind of a chauvinist pig to boot?"
And then I finally figured out the behavioral economics behind the whole thing, and it made total sense.
As anyone who has ever attended a condo auction, or been to the mall around Christmastime knows, a false sense of urgency can be created wherever marketers are successful in manipulating their audience's perception of the scarcity of the supply of an item and/or the time available to acquire it.
In the real world of dating, Brad Womack looks like damaged goods. He is, after all, a 38 year-old never-married guy with daddy issues and an explosive temper. But with a little help from his friends at ABC - in the form of an economically tilted dating environment - Brad suddenly looks like quite the prize to 25 women hand-picked just for him.
Here's how it works: the producers reduce the available supply of guys to just one. Then they reduce the available supply of time to get to know him to a few measly dates over a mere six weeks. To accentuate the sense of scarcity, they insert rose ceremonies - a cruel musical chairs game in which the bachelor has fewer roses than women present, and not getting a rose means a one-way ticket off the Love Boat.
This would explain the desperate machinations of this veritable harem of beautiful women - many of them quite accomplished - to get a few minutes of attention from a guy who doesn't seem like such a catch once the lights are off and the cameras stop rolling.
Now add in the behavioral economic principle of loss-aversion - the idea that the psychological impact of failing at something after we have invested time, money, or emotional energy is twice that of the impact of success under the same circumstances.
This explains the increasingly tearful devastation after each week's rose ceremony. These women swore up and down that they were falling in love after less than a month. But such instant certainty happens much less frequently in the real world. They were simply manipulated into having more invested more quickly than they would under normal circumstances - and that can feel an awful lot like love in the moment.
So never fear, Chantal. You're way better off with Jeff Razore - especially since you fell for him offscreen.
And as for Ms. Emily - I used to hate on you because of the way you were edited on the show. You came across as the kind of girl we've all been conditioned to emulate - to our detriment. But you showed us your feisty side on "After the Final Rose" and now I like you and feel bad that you were manipulated into accepting a proposal from this loser.
Get out, girlfriend - while the getting's still good!
