Take a look at this Lamborghini.
This visual—the glossy shine—is synonymous with new. When you unbox a new gadget or peruse new jewelry, it’s going to have this shiny look to it. Glossy is new. Glossy is better.
Why do we feel this way? What is it about shiny products that pulls us in?
In Saying No to New, I explain how our drive to seek out new things is fueled by an evolutionary need to explore the new. Our ancestors survived and thrived because they paid attention to the new. And today, businesses exploit our innate hunger for novelty to sell us new stuff.
It turns out there’s another biological explanation behind our attraction to new products.
Our preference for glossy is linked to our innate need for water.
Imagine our ancient ancestors roaming the land, desperately thirsty to survive. They come across a refreshing stream of water glistening in the sun. Their eyes light up. Excitement. Joy. Relief.
That response to the glossy texture of water may be why we’re drawn to gleaming things today. The shiny surface of a new pair of sunglasses resembles that of water, eliciting the same emotions that we’d feel when discovering a bubbling brook.
This brings me to one of the most interesting studies I came across in my research for Saying No to New. In it, researchers wanted to test this glossy-water theory. They noted how our liking for glossy can be found in modern days and also long ago. “Centuries ago, prehistoric man polished bone tools to achieve a shiny gleam,” they wrote, citing a paper published in 2001.
In an initial experiment, the researchers gave participants leaflets. Half of the leaflets were printed on glossy paper and the other half of them on non-glossy paper. They asked them to order the leaflets by preference and rank the attractiveness of each one. The result: The glossy leaflets were more preferred and scored higher on the attractiveness scale.
The researchers knew one of the counter-arguments would be that our preference for glossy is learned. After all, society tells us that new, shiny, luxurious is better. So the researchers ran another experiment, only this time with children.
They visited a kindergarten class and asked the kids to rate photos of Santa Claus. Sure enough, as the researchers reported, the kids liked the glossy images of Santa better.
What happens when you eat salty crackers and look at glossy photos?
The scientists ran multiple experiments like this. Then they really put their theory to the test.
The researchers asked the participants to eat some salty crackers. Some of them drank water while others didn’t. A control group didn’t eat any crackers.
Again, they gave them glossy and non-glossy photos and asked them to rank the attractiveness of the pictures.
The two cracker-eating groups rated the glossy photos higher. The researchers also found that the thirstier the individual, the more they liked glossy. “More thirst leads to a higher preference for glossy,” researchers wrote.
The shine of something new can draw us in, grabbing our attention by pulling on our evolutionary need for water. So the next time you’re about to buy a shimmering new thing, ask yourself: Do you really want it? Or did you just eat some salty crackers?
Thanks for reading.
Eric