Hearing Concerning Fridge Door Thinking
Testimony and cross-examination on the practice of holding a refrigerator open as a cognitive aid during appetite deliberation.
HEARING TRANSCRIPT Matter: Fridge Door Thinking , Status Review Presiding: The Chair Present: One Witness Date: January 5, 2024
CHAIR: Please state for the record what you were doing.
WITNESS: I was deciding what to eat.
CHAIR: And the refrigerator door was open during this process.
WITNESS: Yes.
CHAIR: For how long?
WITNESS: I'm not sure. A while.
CHAIR: The door was open for forty seconds. We have a timestamp.
WITNESS: That seems possible.
CHAIR: Can you explain why the door was open while you were thinking, rather than closed?
WITNESS: I needed to see what was in there.
CHAIR: You had looked. You had a full visual inventory. You then continued to hold the door open.
WITNESS: I was still deciding.
CHAIR: You were deciding with the door open.
WITNESS: The cold helps. I think better with the cold.
CHAIR: You think better at refrigerator temperature.
WITNESS: I don't know if "better" is the right word. It helps me focus.
CHAIR: Under the governing rule, fridge door thinking remains valid once changing it would require more explanation than repeating it. Is this your understanding of the situation?
WITNESS: I wouldn't have put it that way.
CHAIR: But you would not close the door during the deliberation period.
WITNESS: It feels wrong to close it. Like I'm cutting off access to the information.
CHAIR: The information is food. The food does not change because the door is closed.
WITNESS: I know that.
CHAIR: But you keep the door open anyway.
WITNESS: Yes.
CHAIR: Fridge door thinking solves the immediate inconvenience once. That success makes repetition feel safer than reconsidering the behavior from scratch. Do you find that accurate?
WITNESS: The first time I did it, I made a decision. I closed the door. I ate the thing I decided on. So yes, it worked.
CHAIR: And now?
WITNESS: Now it's just what I do.
CHAIR: Even when you're not hungry.
WITNESS: I open the door sometimes just to look.
CHAIR: You open the refrigerator as an activity.
WITNESS: When I'm thinking about something else. The cold helps with that too.
CHAIR: Appetite explains the setting, but the behavior continues even when appetite no longer requires it.
WITNESS: That's a formal way to put it.
CHAIR: After enough repeats, the workaround survives even when the original inconvenience is gone.
WITNESS: The electricity bill is probably not ideal.
CHAIR: No. It is not.
The record will reflect that no changes to current practice were agreed upon at this hearing.
Hearing adjourned.