On Revealed Preference theory
“I don’t want to be here, Ricky.” “Then leave, Karl.” “I can’t.” “You mean, you won’t.”
“I don’t want this,” said Maya. But she was in it, wasn’t she? If she were more stable, more reflective, I would have pressed.
“Want what?”
“This relationship.” she might have said.
“There’s so much to this relationship, though, babe. Which bits?”
“The fighting.”
“Stop fighting, then,” I’d carelessly have said. Especially since it wasn’t fighting. Especially as it would have sounded like I was asking her to roll over.
“You’re not respecting my desires.”
“What do you desire?” I’d have been getting warmer.
“I wish you’d stay away from my colleagues then this wouldn’t happen. I wish I was less affected. I wish I desired this enough to keep trying…”
Karl Pilkington once got into a spat with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant live on the air. In case you never knew where Karl Pilkington appeared from, it was actually in the course of Gervais and Merchant’s slot on Global’s Radio X broadcast out of Leicester Square, when they realised the most interesting thing about their show was the expression-less, northern producer whose mind was so fresh-thinking it could often be mistaken for a wind, flitting across a fallow meadow. It made for unintentional comedy gold to ask Karl’s opinion about anything.
In the argument in question, Karl expressed that he wanted to move back to Manchester from London, and Ricky Gervais encouraging him to pursue that ‘want’. Pilkington of course then counters himself by admitting that London is where his friends live and career is, and so Gervais is compelled to reflect that Karl’s greater, active, present want is to stay in London, thus confounding his producer. Gervais was (perhaps unknowingly) echoing a classic principle in economics called Revealed Preference Theory, which he may have been no stranger to since he graduated in Philosophy from UCL.
RPT was proposed by American Economist Paul Samuelson in 1938, the core idea being that people’s true preferences are best revealed by the choices they make, not by what they say that they desire at some point. So if someone says that they prefer Manchester but stays in London, the theory would say their revealed preference is London, since that’s where they choose to live given the trade-offs in friends, family, job market, salaries, rent, tax, greenery, pollution, convenience, packing-moving-unpacking, and countless other factors.
An extreme example lies in hypotheticals involving extreme limitation and authoritarian rule. A prisoner might say “I want to be free”, wishing “I prefer to be free”, but actually meaning “Given the state of things, and the repercussions of attempting to escape, I want to remain imprisoned under these conditions”.
This is their revealed preference. The logic being: the prisoner has weighed up struggling with the guards, or attempting escape against the severity and risk of punishment upon failure, and by obediently serving their term, reveals their decision — to stay in the relative safety of imprisonment over the threat of harsher consequences.
Some more examples:
“I want to not eat cake, understanding it will make me fatter. But I am deciding to eat cake because it brings me short term pleasure.”
“I want to go the gym, understanding it will make me fitter. But I am deciding to read the news because I won’t be up to date with current affairs.”
“I want to escape this prison. But I am deciding to stay put for fear of punishment if I fail.”
A metadesire (or second-order desire) is a desire about one’s desires or lack of them or possibly a wish about one’s own abilities and tolerances. Examples:
“I want to eat cake, but I wish I wanted not to eat it.”
“For the sake of not having to find so much willpower, I wish I wanted to go to the gym.”
“I want my desire for freedom to outweigh my fear of punishment; or my resilience to punishment to be higher.”
Applying RPT to a difficult relationship, one person might think: “I don’t want this relationship” but stays. Their revealed preference to varying degrees of consciousness is to remain, because the trade-offs of leaving (loneliness, upheaval, guilt, etc.) outweigh their stated desire. Again their true preference is whatever they actually end up doing.
When our partner says they ‘don’t want this up-down relationship’ but don’t understand that alternatives include ‘better versions of this relationship’ and not just ‘no relationship’, then that is a failure on their part to be able to imagine, project into, and stick to ways forward that can increase net harmony and happiness.
Break ups happen, by definition, when the work required would be too much for too little gain i.e. to get from state A to more happy state B. But skill and experience is required in order to be able to measure the coordinates of these states and the effort and pitfalls involved in transitioning between them [See — On Expected Utility Alignment].
Here are some relationship-based examples of desires:
“I want to stop fighting, but my partner sets me off.”
“I want to leave, but that conversation will be really hard.”
“I want to confront my cheating partner, but it might not be worth it.”
And relationship-based examples of metadesires:
“I wish I didn’t want to feel safe and loved since it seems very dependent, but I can’t help that feeling.”
“I wish I didn’t want to avoid the pain of a breakup, but I do.”
“I wish I felt at peace when I’m close to people, but I just end up wanting to run.”
We can see how the mind of the conflicted relator is closer to the less penetrable mind of a second order thinker. They wish their desire for freedom would triumph, even though they may still feel pulled back by the rawer desire for closeness, familiarity, or security. This is at the very heart of disorganised attachment. And where therapists need to unearth such thinking and unknot it for clarity, we as jostled partners must lock in on whether our disorganised attacher’s first or second order desire is currently dominating and be prepared for a swing in the other direction: “I don’t want this relationship but I wish I did want it”, or “I want this relationship but I wish I didn’t want it”. The tells as always are in their actions, not their words. And the safeguards we can apply are in modulated, steady, synchronised escalation.
