Research Tidbits

Loss aversion is real. So why do casinos thrive?

What looks irrational often isn’t. Here’s a simple way to decode what’s really going on.

In behavioral economics, the idea of loss aversion is simple: people feel losses more strongly than gains. Losing $50 hurts more than gaining $100 feels good.

By that logic, casinos should struggle; the odds are stacked against the player. And yet, the casino industry is thriving. So what’s going on?

One answer is that people are being irrational. But there’s another way to look at it – one that’s useful if you’re trying to interpret customer behavior that doesn’t seem to make sense.

This is where a simple decoding approach can help. When a behavior looks irrational, step back and ask: What kind of experience is this really? Because when most people walk into a casino, they’re not making a purely financial decision. They’re stepping into an experience.

Once you see that, a second question becomes useful: What tension might this experience be helping resolve?

Take control vs. surrender. Much of modern life demands control – planning, optimizing, getting it right. Over time, that can become exhausting. The casino offers a rare space where you’re allowed to let go. You place the bet. The wheel spins. And for a moment, the outcome is out of your hands. Losing money, in that context, isn’t just a loss. It’s part of the experience of surrender.

Or consider discipline vs. chaos. Daily life often requires restraint – budgets, routines, long-term thinking. The casino creates a temporary break from that discipline. Chaos isn’t a bug. It’s the feature. The money you spend isn’t just money. It’s the price of entering that environment.

There’s also the tension between present self and future self. Loss aversion tends to show up when we’re thinking about the future – “I should save my money.” But casinos are designed to collapse everything into the present moment. Lights. Sounds. Constant feedback. The future self fades. The present self takes over.

And in this case, there’s a more subtle tension at work: agency vs. fate. Even though the outcomes are random, casinos are structured to make you feel like you’re participating – choosing numbers, pulling the lever, deciding when to stop. So at the same time, you’re surrendering control… and exercising it. That sense of possibility is part of what makes the experience compelling.

Seen this way, the decision to gamble looks different. It’s not just about whether you win or lose money. It’s about whether the experience delivers something meaningful.

So how might you use this in practice?

When a customer behavior doesn’t make sense on the surface, try three steps:

  1. Step back from the transaction. Instead of asking “Is this a good deal?” ask: What experience is this creating?
  2. Look for the underlying tension. What pressure might the customer be navigating? In this case, we saw tensions like:
    – control vs. surrender
    – discipline vs. chaos
    – present self vs. future self
    – agency vs. fate
  3. Reframe the decision. Instead of evaluating it in terms of gain vs. loss, ask: What does this behavior help them feel or resolve?

Behavioral science gives us powerful tools. But it often assumes that people are evaluating outcomes in terms of gains and losses. In many cases, the real question is something closer to “was it worth it?” That depends on more than the outcome. It depends on how the experience fits into the tensions they’re living with. Customers aren’t just buying products. They’re resolving tensions in their lives. And sometimes, what looks irrational at the surface level starts to make sense once you see what’s underneath.

If you want to better understand your customers’ seemingly irrational behaviors – and turn that understanding into clearer decisions – let’s talk. Contact me at info at bureauwest.com.

Posted on by Jay Zaltzman

Customers aren’t as irrational as they seem

A core idea in behavioral economics is that customers don’t always behave rationally. From Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational onward, we’ve had a language for the ways decisions deviate from purely logical models.

That lens has been useful, but it may also have led us, subtly, in the wrong direction. What if many of the decisions we describe as “irrational” aren’t irrational at all? What if they’re meaningful – but we’re missing the context that makes them make sense?

In my work, I’ve found that what often sits underneath these decisions is tension. Not random inconsistency, but a structured set of competing forces that people are trying to navigate in their lives. Some of those tensions show up again and again:

  • People want to feel independent, but modern life makes them dependent on systems.
  • People want to feel disciplined, but their days are chaotic.
  • People want to express their individuality, but they also want to feel a sense of belonging.
  • People want to become a better version of themselves, but change is difficult.

When we only look at the customer’s specific decision, it can seem inconsistent or even contradictory. But when we look at the tension the decision is helping resolve, a different kind of logic appears.

Take a familiar example: the pickup truck. Drive through almost any suburban neighborhood in the U.S., and you’ll see them – large pickup trucks parked in driveways, often spotless, their beds empty. For many of these owners, the truck is rarely used for hauling or towing. Day to day, it’s used for commuting, errands, and school drop-offs. From a purely functional standpoint, it’s more vehicle than most people need. It’s harder to park, more expensive to run, and less efficient than many alternatives.

And yet, it’s a remarkably common choice. If we look at that through a purely logical lens, it’s easy to see the decision as inefficient, or even irrational. But look at it through the lens of tension, and something else comes into view.

For many buyers, the pickup truck sits at the intersection of independence and dependence. Even if daily life rarely demands it, the truck carries the possibility of self-sufficiency – the sense that “I could handle it if I needed to.” In a world where so much of life depends on systems, services, and other people, that feeling has real value.

At the same time, the truck often navigates a tension between individuality and belonging. It signals a certain identity – capable, practical, grounded – while also connecting the driver to a broader cultural narrative that feels familiar and shared.

Seen this way, the choice isn’t irrational. It’s helping the customer navigate tensions that aren’t visible if we only focus on features, price, or stated needs.

Once you start looking at customer behavior through this lens, patterns begin to emerge. Decisions that once felt inconsistent start to feel structured. What looked unpredictable starts to feel, in many cases, surprisingly coherent.

I explore this lens more fully in my new book, The American Customer: The Hidden Forces That Shape Choice, which is now officially out. The book looks at how culture and identity shape the way people interpret their choices – and why those choices carry meaning that isn’t always immediately visible. It offers a way to move beyond describing behavior to actually decoding it.

The book is available here.

I’ve also been developing these ideas further in a presentation, Decoding the American Customer, where I explore how to identify these tensions and apply them in practice. If that would be useful for your team or organization, please contact me at info at bureauwest.com.

Source: “The American Customer: The Hidden Forces That Shape Choice,” Jay Zaltzman, March 23, 2026

Posted on by Jay Zaltzman

If decisions are emotional, why do we still ask rational questions?

A small paradox at the heart of customer research – and what it reveals about how people really make decisions

Over the past few decades, behavioral economics and behavioral science have shown something most researchers recognize immediately: people don’t fully understand the true drivers of their decisions.

Yet in customer research, we often design our questions as if rational explanations will reveal the answer. Ask someone why they chose a particular product and the response usually sounds perfectly logical: “Price.” “Features.” “Convenience.” “A good deal.”

Those explanations aren’t necessarily wrong. But they’re rarely the whole story. I remember an interview years ago with a woman who told me she would never switch car brands. When I asked why, she talked about reliability, resale value, and service quality. It sounded like a textbook rational decision.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she added: “It was the first car I bought after my divorce. It made me feel like I could start over.”

In that moment the decision made sense – not because of the features, but because of what the purchase meant to her. She wasn’t really buying transportation. She was buying a sense of independence and renewal.

Moments like that happen constantly in qualitative research. Participants explain their choices in rational terms, yet the emotional driver of the decision emerges indirectly – in stories, metaphors, or moments that seem almost incidental.

The interesting question isn’t why decisions are emotional. Behavioral science has demonstrated that repeatedly. The more interesting question is why people so often describe those decisions in rational language.

Part of the answer, I’ve come to believe, is cultural. In the United States especially, people feel a strong pressure to present themselves as confident, rational, and self-directed. Decisions are expected to look intentional and logical, even when the deeper motivations are emotional. So when we ask people why they chose something, the answer we hear is often the explanation that feels most acceptable to say out loud.

Over years of research interviews, I began to notice that participants were often answering a different question than the one I had asked.

This dynamic doesn’t just affect research interviews. It shapes how insights get interpreted inside organizations. When customer explanations sound rational, teams often focus on functional improvements – better features, lower prices, more convenience. But if the real driver of the decision is emotional or cultural, those improvements may miss what actually matters to customers.

When we ask, “Why did you choose this?” the answer might really be responding to a deeper, unspoken question such as:

  • Will this make me feel competent?
  • Does this reflect the kind of person I want to be?
  • Will people like me choose this too?

Those hidden questions often explain far more about a decision than the rational explanation that appears on the surface.

Seeing that pattern repeatedly led me to write a short book I’ve just finished: The American Customer: The Hidden Forces That Shape Choice.

The book explores how cultural stories – about independence, reinvention, belonging, and possibility – shape the way American customers interpret their decisions and explain them to others. It also introduces a few practical lenses I’ve found useful for decoding motivations that participants don’t always articulate directly.

The book will be published in late March, 2026. I’m especially interested in whether the ideas resonate with your own experience in research or marketing. If you have thoughts, questions, or reactions, I’d love to hear them. Contact me at info at bureauwest.com.

Posted on by Jay Zaltzman

Gerald Zaltman dares us to own our thinking

On ambiguity, ignorance, imagination – and the limits of AI.

I had the opportunity to interview Gerald Zaltman – creator of ZMET and one of the leading voices in uncovering the non-conscious drivers of thought and behavior – about his new book, Dare to Think Differently. (Note: we’re not related… as far as we know!)

Jerry told me the impetus for the book came from his interest in how people approach ill-structured or messy problems – the kinds of problems we and our clients deal with every day.

Here are four ideas that stood out as especially relevant for leaders, strategists, and insights professionals:

1. Embracing ambiguity
Jerry offered a deceptively simple idea: The primary job of a mind is to make meaning out of ambiguity.

We often treat ambiguity as a problem to eliminate. In strategy sessions and debriefs, the pressure is to “get clarity” quickly. But ambiguity is often where the opportunity lives. It’s where:

  • The next product idea is hiding
  • The overlooked emotional tension sits
  • The unexamined assumption operates

For those of us in insight roles, our job isn’t to prematurely tidy ambiguity. It’s to help organizations sit with it long enough to extract meaning.

2. Ignorance is where competitive advantage lives
Jerry said, “Ignorance is where the next competitive advantage is dwelling.”
 
Most organizations treat ignorance as something to conceal. In healthy cultures, it’s something to surface. When something feels unclear in a category or customer journey, that fog may be signal, not noise.
 
A few practical questions this suggests:

  • What are we missing?
  • What assumption are we not aware we’re making?
  • What piece of information would make this puzzle clearer?

Those questions alone can change how research is commissioned and how findings are used.

3. Imagination comes before creativity
Jerry drew a distinction I found clarifying:

  • Imagination is seeing what’s missing.
  • Creativity is making that idea workable.

We often treat creativity as the main event. But in his framing, creativity is an off-ramp from imagination – what makes an idea practical or executable.
 
Imagination comes earlier. It’s the ability to picture what could fill the gap in an ambiguous situation – to see what we don’t yet fully understand. Without imagination, creativity has nothing solid to build on.
 
For those of us working in research and strategy, that’s a useful reminder: before refining the solution, we have to ensure we’ve identified what’s actually missing.
 
Imagination requires sitting with ambiguity long enough to notice the gap – and that may be the harder discipline.

4. Thinking “like” vs. thinking “as” – the AI Question
Our conversation also turned to AI. Jerry described the difference between thinking “like” and thinking “as.”
 
AI can help us think like something – simulate patterns, accelerate analysis, generate language. But thinking as a human involves embodied, constantly shifting cognition that shapes imagination and meaning.
 
His warning was clear: AI can augment imagination and creativity, but it cannot replace them. The risk isn’t using AI – the risk is outsourcing imagination.
 
Taken together, these ideas are about ownership of thinking. Ownership shows up in how you:

  • Stay with ambiguity instead of rushing to clarity
  • Surface ignorance instead of hiding it
  • Strengthen imagination before jumping to execution
  • Use AI as a tool without surrendering judgment

When I asked Jerry why someone should read the book, he resisted giving a conventional benefit statement. Now I understand why. The book doesn’t hand you conclusions. It sharpens your ability to reach better ones.

You can watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H75GE1O91w

If you’re wrestling with an ill-structured problem and want to turn ambiguity into meaningful direction, I’d welcome a conversation. Contact me at info at bureauwest.com.

Sources: “From Insight to Impact: Interview with Gerald Zaltman,” 2/24/26; “Dare to Think Differently: How Open-Mindedness Creates Exceptional Decision-Making,” Gerald Zaltman, 2/24/26

Posted on by Jay Zaltzman