The pain of loss is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gain.
When Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published Prospect Theory in 1979, a generation of advertisers mistakenly began to speak to Pain, and to the fear of Loss.
If you frame a choice as “Loss versus Gain,” most people will choose loss avoidance because “losses loom larger than gains.”
Equally unwise is to frame a choice as “Pain versus Pleasure.”
Pain and Pleasure are not as distinct as they may at first seem. You do not recall the event itself, but only your most recent memory of it.
The experience of pain or pleasure during an event is replaced by the memory of that pain or pleasure; how it is perceived afterwards upon recall. Your memory is built upon what you were feeling at the peak point, and how the experience ended.
These are the four peaks that matter:
1. Elevation: a transcendent moment of happiness.
2. Pride: a moment that captures you at your best.
3. Insight: a eureka moment that gives you startling clarity
4. Connection: a moment of knowing you belong.
Don’t speak to the fear of loss – or to the avoidance of pain – unless you are counting on an immediate response from people who are easily alarmed.
If you desire your audience to embrace the possibility of pain and loss, you must reframe the choice as “Fear versus Hope.”
We have lionized feats of bravery and ridiculed acts of cowardice for millennia.
“Are you a frightened, fearful little waste of skin, or will your actions be remembered for generations? Is there anything you care about more than yourself?”
To cause a person to prefer more pain instead of less pain, all you have to do is add a better ending.
“With a beginning that invites each man to assume he’ll be the one who ‘outlives this day, and comes safe home,’ the speech skims over present difficulties to paint an evocative picture of future fellowship and hearty celebration. Instead of focusing on the suffering they’re about to face, the men project themselves years ahead, to the happy time when they will be old and honored, with even the meanest of their number elevated to gentry status as the king’s brothers-in-arms. With this vivid picture of their glorious future, the king moves the troops to conquer their fears and follow him to victory.”
– Virginia Postrel, The Power of Glamour
Virginia Postrell was referring to a famous speech Shakespeare wrote for a play in 1599.
When they were impossibly outnumbered at Agincourt in 1415 and every man thought he was about to die; this is that famous speech given by King Henry V.
HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER
Where is the King?
JOHN, DUKE OF BEDFORD
The King himself is rode to view their battle.
EARL OF WESTMORLAND
Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand.
DUKE OF EXETER
There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
(The King, unseen, approaches from behind and hears… )
EARL OF WESTMORLAND
O that we now had here
But one ten-thousand of those men in England
That do no work today!
KING HENRY V
What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmorland? No, my fair cousin.
If we are mark’d to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more.
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through...
