Would you sacrifice all your worldly possessions to be the modern Beethoven? Would you give up the love of family and friends to be Richie Rich Jr.? What would you really do for a Klondike Bar? We wanted to know what burdens people would tolerate to receive a gift from life’s lottery… so, like good market researchers, we designed a conjoint experiment to quantify people’s trade-offs. Given the option of two hypothetical blessing-curse mashups, respondents selected their preferred combination.
People are more likely to make decisions based on what they don’t want (57%) than what they do want (43%). Americans are most willing to have their most personal details splashed across the Internet as long as they have the comfort of a large, loving family. Aww… so wholesome, Hallmark will probably turn it into a Christmas Special. By contrast, people most definitely wouldn’t trade in their brains for brawns. Gold just isn’t worth its weight in gray matter.
