This thought about perspective was inspired by recent
medical news about the color of pills and by a slightly older story about the
color of cars. Perspective is about distinguishing
between what’s important and what’s trivial, hence, living according to real
values rather than values imposed by society. People strong in perspective look past external appearances and tend to adopt a lifestyle based on moderation. Common examples of poor perspective include
the Black Friday stampedes and the accumulation of debt from buying to satisfy
our wants and impulses or to impress others.
A key lesson is that appearances are often deceptive when it comes to judging what's really important. Nevertheless, examples
abound showing how people are overly influenced by external factors, in the following
cases by color alone.
The first is a health report that came out earlier this week. Studies show that when the color of
medication is changed, there is a greater a tendency for people to stop taking it. This occurred 27 to 50 percent of the time,
and it is not a trivial problem. “Failure
to take a prescribed medication — a behavior known as non-adherence — costs
$290 billion annually in additional health complications, according to the New
England Healthcare Institute.”
Apparently generic medication, less expensive but identical to the brand
name drug, may be manufactured by several companies. They don’t coordinate with each other on the
color, nor do they take great pains to maintain consistency within each
company. People look at their pills and
don’t recognize them or are confused by the color. Over-reliance on visual cues causes them to make poor decisions about continuing medication.
The influence of something as superficial as color extends
beyond the health field. As this article points out, “BuyingAdvice.com [has found] that if a car is not available in the
preferred color, 40 percent of drivers will decide to change brands.” With all the factors involved in deciding
which car to buy: safety, reliability, fuel
economy, price, warrantee, insurance costs, and others; isn’t it surprising
that 40% would switch brands – Ford instead of Toyota or Kia instead of Subaru –
just because they can’t find the color they want? This is especially surprising since, when
sitting inside a car, it’s very difficult to tell what color the car is! The color is visible only to other
people. It could be ugly green or bright
pink and you’d never know it until you got out.
When making major decisions, it's critical to put substantial factors ahead of superficial ones. Based
on these stories alone, color is one of those external factors that wrongly
holds considerable sway in decision making. A good New Year’s resolution might be to try to be less influenced by
appearance and other external factors. Maybe we can start
with pills and cars and work our way up to people.
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