Everything You Know About Counterintuitivity Is Right

If there is one thing that publishers are desperate for right now, it’s counterintuitivity. “Just add some more counterintuitive stuff,” an agent said to me about a book proposal. “You know, something like, ‘You thought you knew that cottage cheese makes for a healthy diet, but, as indicated by new research coming out of the University of Flerstine, as little as three grams of lo-fat cottage cheese can produce one zilligram of xerocrene, which actually increases one’s desire to eat large slices of pie.” Who knew? Cottage cheese linked to pie consumption! That is flippin’ counterintuitive. Didn’t even know there was such a thing as xerocrene. Wow!

I am convinced that some pleasurable physical thing happens in the brain when a few grey cells find out that the tidbit of info they had been storing all those years is complete hooey and can now be shot out through the endocrine system into outer space and replaced with some shiny new bit of correct knowledge. Good riddance, you completely wrong thought! Welcome, you cool, learned, actual fact.

We have Malcolm Gladwell to thank for this. One of his favored expressions is, “It turns out that…” Meaning that, after extensive analysis of all the fascinating research that is being conducted in lofty places by celebrated brainiacs that only he has access to, Malcolm is able to definitively pronounce that all the impressions that most people have about a lot of things are actually ass backwards and he can definitively state how things finally, conclusively, “turn out.” I love that kind of switcheroo, especially when it’s followed by a nice, chunky certainty.

You might assume that publishers (and readers) would never tire of such literary parlor tricks, but, according to recent research conducted by the good folks at The Center for Sudden Twists and Unexpected Turns, it turns out that increased exposure to counterintuitive statements actually leads to a decrease in one’s ability to make any assumptions about anything at all, with the result that it gets harder and harder to displace known incorrect facts with new correct ones, thus reducing the average number of counterintuitive pleasure bursts per page, which eventually reduces book sales, and ultimately causes publishers to look for new ways to stimulate the grey cells. Expect to see a return to the comforting pleasure of affirmation that everything you already know is actually right.

Who knew?