Page 155 - The Social Animal

Social Cognition 137

Rachel may not like the taste? Or would you feel that Rachel, even
at this tender age, should be making her own decisions, regardless of
the consequences? My recommendation may surprise you: The fight
is for naught. Tell Rachel and her mom to buy the Lucky Charms
because, in actuality, it is more nutritious than the “natural” cereal. If
Rachel’s mom had bothered to read the fine print and conducted a
systematic comparison between Lucky Charms and 100% Natural
Granola, she would have discovered that Lucky Charms is lower in
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calories and saturated fats than 100% Natural Granola. Although
Lucky Charms is also slightly higher in sugar, this difference is neg-
ligible and of little dietary importance. Indeed, in 1981 Consumer Re-
ports, a highly respected source of consumer information, conducted
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a test of breakfast cereals. Their researchers fed young rats, which
have nutritional requirements remarkably similar to those of hu-
mans, a diet composed exclusively of water and one of 32 brands of
breakfast cereal for a period of 14 to 18 weeks. They found that the
rats grew and remained healthy on a diet of Lucky Charms. On the
other hand, a diet of Quaker’s 100% Natural Granola actually
stunted their growth!
What caused the disagreement between Rachel and her mom? It
is clear that they used the cereal package (not the cereal) as a represen-
tative heuristic. In this case, the problem for Mom was to select a nu-
tritious cereal; for Rachel the problem was to get a cereal that was fun
and tasty. The box of Lucky Charms resembles a child’s toy—bright
colors, cartoon character, glistening sugar. We infer that this cereal is
“childish,” and since children eat junk food if not carefully supervised,
this cereal must be junk. On the other hand, the 100% Natural Gra-
nola box has the earth tones and a picture of unprocessed grains; it re-
sembles nature itself. And, of course, the brand name is consistent; it
is “natural” and, in our minds, the natural is equated with the good,
the wholesome. The cereal must be nutritious.
The representative heuristic can be used in places other than the
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supermarket. An analysis of folk remedies and early Western med-
icine shows that a common assumption is that the cure should re-
semble the cause of the disease. For example, in one culture, epilepsy
is treated with a drug made from a monkey whose movements
appear epileptic. Similarly, in Western culture, newspapers initially
ridiculed Walter Reed’s suggestion that yellow fever was carried by
a mosquito, since there is little resemblance between the cause