Don't Ever Change

So here's something weird about me: I have always thought that I hated change.

It seems strange. I have no aversion to trying new types of food, going to new places, figuring out new ways of doing things more efficiently, nor learning things I've never thought about before. In fact, I love all of these things. A lot.

But I've always found a strange dilemma in the fact that, as much as I love new things, I appear to hate change. I don't wanna think about it. I just want things done when they can just be done and it's over. I hate the transition and the time involved and I'm just effing lazy about it.

As it turns out, I just prefer to avoid going through certain mental processes when I'm facing low involvement situations.

Example: I like my schedule to be very consistent. I get up at the same time every day, go to the gym, put on coffee and the exact same breakfast (Red River Cereal), get in the shower, make my lunch (usually some minor variations on the same thing every day), and go to work. Work is all crazy, all the time, and requires constant problem-solving. I finish up, drive home, make dinner, and do school stuff. This is my every day routine, and I adore it.

Example: I call the same sushi place every time we order in, and the person on the other line knows my order (and my credit card number, oops) off by heart. I prefer going to the same place every time a client suggests we have a lunch meeting. I always order the spinach dip. I love nachos -- maybe not because I love them, but because they require no thought.

So what's up with that? According to a little research on consumer memory today, I've learned that this isn't nearly as uncommon as one might suspect.

Basically, the literature suggests that we all have needs, and that we satisfy these needs by creating goals, or targeted end-states. We use both conscious and non-conscious processes to assess how we might get about achieving said goals. Conscious learning, memory retrieval, and evaluation are explicit -- we know that we have to use our cognitive resources to calculate 21*72. But 2*3? That's six. What animal barks? A dog. What's the capital of France? Gay Paree, friends.

The second set of questions (hopefully) used no conscious mental resources. They're so ingrained in our minds that we just jump there. We have a feeling, we have a conclusion, whatever.

Like the nachos.

Basically, when faced with decisions, we come up with a set of options. The set of choices that automatically enter our minds are known as the evoked set. Companies spend millions upon millions of dollars just trying to increase the accessibility of their brands in our minds. Because, hell, if we don't even think of 'em, they don't stand a chance of being our ultimate choice.

So yeah. My evoked set is ever-so-small. I'm a marketer's wet dream if they can get all up and in there in the first place, but I'm not as easy as one might think.

Note: I am not a psychologist, but a marketer with an interest in consumer behaviour. If my understanding is lacking valuable detail, please feel free to correct me!