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1、Door closer, are you? 1?The next time you're deciding between?rival?options, one which is primary and the other which is?secondary, ask yourself this question: What would?Xiang Yu?do? 2?Xiang Yu was a Chinese?imperial?general in the third century BC who took his troops across the?Zhang River?on a?

2、raid?into enemyterritory.?To his troops' astonishment, he ordered their cooking pots crushed and their sailing ships burned. 3?He explained that he was imposing on them a necessity for attaining victory over their?opponents.?What he said was surelymotivating, but it wasn't really appreciated by man

3、y of his?loyal?soldiers as they watched their?vessels?go up in flames.?But the?genius?of General Xiang Yu's?conviction?would be?validated?both on the battlefield and in modern social science research.?General Xiang Yu was a rare?exception?to the norm, a?veteran?leader who was highly respected for hi

4、s many?conquests?and who achieved the?summit?of success. 4?He is featured in?Dan Ariely's?enlightening?new?publication,?Predictably?Irrational, a fascinating?investigation?of seemingly irrational human behavior, such as the tendency for keeping multiple options open.?Most people can't?marshal?the w

5、ill for painful choices, not even students at the?Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Dr. Ariely teaches?behavioral?economics.?In an experiment that investigated decision-making, hundreds of students couldn't bear to let their options vanish, even though it was clear they wouldprofit?

6、from doing so. 5?The experiment?revolved?around a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go.?In the real world, we can always say, "It's good to?preserve?our options."?Want a good example??A teenager is exhausted from soccer, ballet, piano, and Chinese lessons, but her

7、 parents won't stop any one of them because they might come in handy some day! 6?In the experiment?sessions, students played a computer game that provided cash behind three doors appearing on the screen.?The rule was the more money you earned, the better player you were, given a total of 100 clicks

8、.?Every time the students opened a door by clicking on it, they would use up one click but wouldn't get any money.?However, each subsequent click on that door would earn afluctuating?sum of money, with one door always revealing more money than the others.?The important part of the rule was each door

9、 switch, though having no cash value, would also use up one of the 100 clicks.?Therefore, the winning strategy was to quickly check all the doors and keep clicking on the one with the seemingly highest rewards. 7?While playing the game, students noticed a?modified?visual?element: Any door left un-c

10、licked for a short while would shrink in size and vanish.?Since they already understood the game, they should have ignored the vanishing doors.?Nevertheless, they hurried to click on the lesser doors before they vanished, trying to keep them open.?As a result, they wasted so many clicks rushing back

11、 to the vanishing doors that they lost money in the end.?Why were the students so attached to the lesser doors??They would probably?protestthat they were?clinging?to the doors to keep future options open, but, according to Dr. Ariely, that isn't the true?factor. 8?Instead of the excuse to maintain

12、future options open,?underneath?it all the students' desire was to avoid the immediate, thoughtemporary, pain of watching options close.?"Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a big price to avoid the emotion of loss," Dr. Ariely says.?In the experiment,

13、 the price was easily measured in lost cash.?In life, the corresponding costs are often less obvious such as wasted time or missed opportunities. 9?"Sometimes these doors are closing too slowly for us to see them vanishing," Dr. Ariely writes. "We may work more hours at our jobs without realizing t

14、hat the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away." 10?So, what can be done to?restore?balance in our lives??One answer, Dr. Ariely says, is to?implement?more prohibitions on overbooking.?We can work to reduce options on our own,?delegating?tasks to others and even giving away ideas for

15、others to pursue.He points to marriage as an example, "In marriage, we create a situation where we promise ourselves not to keep options open. We close doors and announce to others we've closed doors." 11?Since conducting the door experiment, Dr. Ariely says he has made a conscious effort to lessen

16、 his load.?He urges the rest of us to resign from committees,?prune?holiday card lists, rethink hobbies and remember the lessons of door closers like Xiang Yu. 12?In other words, Dr. Ariely is encouraging us to?discard?those things that seem to have?outward?merit in favor of those things that actua

17、lly enrich our lives.?We are naturally?prejudiced?to believe that more is better, but Dr. Ariely's research provides a?dose?of reality that strongly suggests otherwise. 13?What price do we pay for trying to have more and more in life??What pleasure and satisfaction can be derived from focusing our

18、energy and attention in a more concentrated fashion??Surely, we will have our?respective?answers. 14?Consider these important questions: Will we have more by always increasing options or will we have more with fewer, carefully chosen options??What doors should we close in order to allow the right windows of opportunity and happiness to open?