The Region-Beta Paradox, or Why Good Enough Can Be Worse than Bad
In which we worry about our personal threshold value
I.
Imagine two NBA players. (I choose the NBA because I happen to know a good example to illustrate my point, plus over half of my subscribers are from the US. Howdy, folks.)
One of the players ruptures his Achilles tendon. The other one has a few minor injuries.
Who’ll have the best career?
Unexpectedly, it might be the first one.
When Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles tendon on April 12, 2014, there were plenty of 'game over’ rumors. Eight months later, Kobe got back on court and a few weeks after that, he became the oldest player, at age 36, to record 30 points, 10 assists, and 10 rebounds in a single game. (To be surpassed by Lebron James seven years later.)
In contrast, there have been/are several players of All-Star potential who are plagued by minor injuries and are rarely playing at 100%.
Why is this? When Kobe tore his Achilles, no one expected him to be back in a few weeks. Instead, he had many months to dedicate himself to recovering. Players with less severe injuries sit out a game and are expected back on court for the next.
This is (a slightly strained) example of the region-beta paradox. We bear small discomforts, but take action to resolve big ones.
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues wrote a seminal paper on this phenomenon in 2004. The title says it all: ‘The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad‘. Related to my NBA example, they illustrate it like this:
A trick knee hurts longer than a shattered patella because the latter injury exceeds the critical threshold for pain and thereby triggers the very processes that attenuate it.
You don’t go for surgery when dealing with a minor, nagging injury; you go when things say crack. (Of course, a minor injury can become a big problem over time that requires surgery.)
In short, as long as our situation is not too bad, we make no or very little effort to change it. It’s only when things pass a certain ‘oh crap’ threshold, that we take action.
II.
The region-beta paradox is not only for injuries — far from it. It’s a persistent psychological phenomenon that affects many parts of our lives.
Imagine: you have a close friend who has a long-term partner. They’re… alright. Better than being single, anyway. But the eyes of your friend have lost their luster and they have a little less pep in their step. You invite a bunch of friends over for dinner and expertly maneuver that specific friend away from their partner and ask how they’re doing, how their relationship is going. “Okay,” they say. You know better. You push a little bit, not quite to the point of discomfort, but they’re your friend, dammit. “It’s like I’ve become invisible,” your friend eventually says. “They don’t even hold me anymore; it’s just our weekly scheduled sex session and that’s it. We don’t even talk; it’s like we live beside rather than with each other. I feel unseen, ignored, and it makes me sad and anxious.”
You think two things: 1) why haven’t they talked about this? and 2) if they have, why is my friend still with this partner?
Answer: the region-beta paradox. Your friend might well be scared to poke the rut their relationship has settled in by talking and/or be afraid to lose their partner by sounding like ‘too much work’ — after all, their partner isn’t cheating or being (physically) abusive.
Note that I’m not saying that you should randomly dump someone when things aren’t perfect. No relationship is ever perfect, and every relationship requires work. However, when there is no communication or when the brunt of the work is born by one part of the equation, it might be time to ask if you’re unwillingly stuck in region beta.
Imagine another scenario: you have a decent job. Not your dream job, but those don’t exist anyway. It’s good enough. So you plow through, tick the boxes of your job description, and dedicate the contractually agreed hours to whatever it is you have to do. Then an opportunity comes along. It’s not just good; it’s better than good. It could be great… if it works out, which is far from guaranteed. You mull over it for weeks. Eventually, the opportunity passes. The day after, you go to work again. Forty years pass. On the day of your retirement, you still regret not chasing that opportunity.
Why? Why didn’t you go for it? Why didn’t you take the chance?
Answer, once again: the region-beta paradox. Your decent job was good enough. It was agreeable, secure, and helped you pay the bills.
I’m not saying that you should quit your job in pursuit of some crazy pipe dream. Those stories that make the rounds of people quitting their job and stumbling into a li(f)e full of sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows are either fake or one out of several million. But, if you’re starting to dread your office chair, and begin to construct scenario after scenario in your head where you aren’t beaten to a pulp by meaningless work, it might be a good time to list some pros and cons of a potential career switch.
Not everyone can switch or change their situation easily, of course. But we are more likely to make a change when it’s bad rather than when it’s ‘good enough’. If the partner from the imaginary example would have been a serial cheater, your friend might have packed up and left, perhaps ending up in a kind and fulfilling relationship with someone else. If your boss would have treated you horribly, you might have marched into their office and thrown their computer out of the window by way of resignation, only to go on and start a successful business.
III.
The beta region is not evil or to be avoided at all costs, but it is hard to navigate, even if it is a necessary part of our psychology. It exists because 1) we are afraid of change and afraid to change, but also because 2) change is costly; it requires time, effort, resources, mental bandwidth… To return to the Gilbert paper:
The psychological processes that attenuate distress can also have costs… and thus they tend to be triggered only when distress passes a critical threshold. People rationalize divorces, demotions, and diseases, but not slow elevators and uninspired burgundies.
There is nothing wrong with lingering in region beta, it’s an evolved psychological survival mechanism and it serves its purpose well. Unfortunately, sometimes our region beta is too large and we don’t change a thing (complacency) or our region beta is a mirage on the horizon and we never get there (perfectionism).
This is a threshold problem.
Threshold for change too high? You settle all the time, for everything. Welcome to the land of cozy complacency. Threshold for change too low? It’s never good enough. You never take a break because you have to do better, be better. Ah, perfectionism, that specter of perpetual feelings of inadequacy. (Of course, you have different thresholds for different things. You can be complacent in a relationship but a perfectionist in your work, for example, or vice versa.)
The trick, then, to resolve your personal region beta paradox is to define your threshold values. How much discomfort are you willing to bear in different aspects of life? And how principled are you willing to be about that threshold when your circumstances work against you?
There are no right or wrong answers.
That’ll have to be good enough…
(Specter says: “Do better.”)
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