Minutes Concerning Coffee Price Memory
A person's recalled price for a standard coffee has not been updated since 2017. New information continues to arrive and is declined.
Minutes: Coffee Price Memory Observations, April 2022
The Reference Price
Every person carries a reference price for a cup of coffee. The reference price is established at some point in early adulthood, during a period when the person bought coffee frequently enough to register the cost.
After this period, the reference price does not update automatically.
New prices arrive. They are compared against the reference. If they exceed the reference, they are noted as expensive. They are not incorporated.
Consequence One: The Reaction
When a person encounters a coffee priced above their reference, they react. The reaction is proportional to the gap between the reference and the actual price, not to the actual price itself.
A person whose reference is $2.50 experiences a $5.00 coffee as a significant event. A person whose reference is $4.80 does not.
The coffee is the same. The reference determines the size of the reaction.
Consequence Two: The Explanation
Following the reaction, the person often explains it. The explanation involves an era when coffee cost what it should have cost. The era is described with some precision.
Colleagues who did not form their reference price in that era do not share the reaction. They are not moved by the comparison. This is sometimes described as a generational difference. It is a reference-price difference.
Consequence Three: The Transaction
The person purchases the coffee.
They do not boycott the establishment. They do not prepare coffee at home as a matter of ongoing principle. They pay the current price and continue to hold the reference price from 2017.
Both facts coexist without apparent difficulty.
The Absurd Rule
A reference price, once established, requires active effort to update. Passive receipt of new price information is insufficient. The person must decide to update the reference. This decision is rarely made.
The reference price is not a fact about the world. It is a fact about when the person last paid attention to a specific category of facts.
The Contradiction
The person who most frequently expresses surprise at current coffee prices is also the person who buys coffee every working day without exception.
They have paid the current price hundreds of times. The surprise has not diminished.
The transaction and the reaction are now entirely independent systems. They run in parallel.