The Diderot Effect
This article is going to be more of a story but just like how all of my articles have some value at the end, this will do too. Sit back, relax, read and enjoy.
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher. He was almost poor his entire life but the tables turned one fine day. It is not how it turned or what he did to make the tables turn that matter, but what happened after that interest us.
Diderot was crippled in terms of money and assets, but not in in terms of mind. He was a great thinker and a philosopher. His literary works gained mainstream attention when he wrote one of the first editions of modern encyclopedia (called Encyclopédie in French). Around the late 17th century, Diderot’s daughter was to be married but the wedding was called off as Diderot couldn’t afford for the wedding. The story of the plight of a father who was not able to fulfil his daughter’s marriage travelled quickly and eventually reached Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. Having heard about Diderot and his literary works, she had the urge to help him out from his financial troubles and bought not only Encyclopedie but his entire library for a massive price. And all of a sudden, Diderot became so rich. He quickly arranged a grand wedding for his daughter and also bought himself a bright red robe. This is where the trouble began. It all started with this shining red robe.
Although the red robe was very luxurious, Diderot later wrote an essay stating how the new robe made him sad. The essay states that Diderot heavily felt the urge to upgrade nearly all items in his house as they didn’t fit well with the robe. To match to the luxury of the robe, he upgraded his chair, bought new paintings, new clocks and a lot more. One purchase lead to the other and it never looked to end.
Coined by anthropologist Grant McGracken, the Diderot Effect is a behaviour where we decide what to do next based on what has happened before.
How does this go against us ?
Take the example of Apple. If you own a MacBook, you are more likely to update your normal watch with an Apple Watch, replace your existing tablet with an iPad or even purchase one newly only to fit in the Mac Ecosystem. Now, I’m not saying this is bad but sometimes we intend to purchase things that we don’t really need much but are anyway going to just because that fits in well with what we already have. This is not just the case with Apple or any other huge MNC, but it also comes down to how general purpose stores are arranged. There’s a certain psychology behind how things are ordered and place in a store which pushes you to buy one more extra product that fits well with what you actually wanted to buy.
How does this help us ?
Despite this effect being largely focused on economics in the recent studies, one can use this to also get more work done. The book “Atomic Habits” talks about an idea called Habit Stacking where the author tells that you are more likely to perform a new action if you chain it with something you’re already doing. For example, let’s say you’re reading a book before dinner in your tablet regularly. Although you want to journal every single day before bed, you continuously fail to do so. Now given that you read regularly before dinner and that you utilize your tablet for it, you can try to journal in your tablet just after your everyday read. By doing so, the chances of you developing this new habit is very large. The Habit Stacking approach is very similar to that of the Diderot Effect but here we’re using it to upgrade ourself for the better.
By the way, if you want a quick summary on Atomic Habits, I got you covered. Here’s my 3-minute read on Atomics Habits.
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