I knew that that one woman, Melanie, had graduated from one of the most prestigious law schools in the country and taken a position with a high-powered firm in New York City right after passing the bar. Her professional schedule robbed her of personal time, and she wanted some of it back. Her ideal life included more hours for personal growth and family time, and she was finding ways to get them. In fact, soon she would be leaving her firm and moving to Atlanta to start her career over again in a less stressful area of law. A bold move, for sure.
I learned that Cristina didn’t have kids, but in her world she had a hard time admitting to anyone that she actually wanted them. In our first conversation I’d asked if children were a part of her ideal life and she said, “God no!” But in her basket, when she shopped the store, she had hidden away the THREE+ KIDS bag. When I asked about it, she replied, “If I’m being honest, that’s always what I sort of pictured for myself.”
Amanda had told me she has a lot of siblings and spends her time helping them, but the contents of her ideal life included more personal time. She told me she felt guilty about that, but wondered, “Why do you have to think as a woman that you have to sacrifice yourself?”
What was it about the shopping experience that affected what these women hoped to achieve in their lives?
In our conversations these women had told me that in everyday contexts, they tended to think with a narrow focus. They made life decisions in isolation, as one-off choices, without consideration of what trade-offs would necessarily follow. They were thinking about what they would do to meet the current demands on their time and talent. They were trying to solve today’s problems with today’s resources. Kaylan was in seminary school, so she thought her next job would be as a minister; that’s what comes next. Kirsty said her doctor had told her it was time to have kids; she was considering it even though she wasn’t ready yet. These women tended to think about what they could and should do with their life the way it was currently structured. As a result, their narrow focus left them feeling unfulfilled and trapped.
In contrast, this shopping experience had induced a wide bracket. The women were designing their ideal life holistically. They were finding ways to feasibly piece together their greatest aspirations. In the store, they saw all life’s options before their eyes. The challenge was deciding which ones would fit in their basket. The size of the basket and the number of products that could actually fit into it were metaphors for the constraints imposed by reality. When Melanie picked up the plastic bottle that said she wanted a twenty- to forty-hour workweek, she had to wedge it in between the canister embellished with the $200,000 SALARY sticker and alongside the bag saying she wanted to go back to school to earn a doctorate degree in the future. Tasha tried to work a GRADUATE DEGREE bag into her basket, along with a can pronouncing that she wanted to feel constantly challenged at work, the tube indicating that she planned to retire before the age of sixty, and a jar saying that she would travel multiple times a year. I overheard Tasha ask her friend Kayon how she could possibly take on all that she wanted: “I’m starting grad school, and then you have work, you have all these things, but then how do you fit in, like, a family?” Kayon replied, “You fit in a family just the same way you fit in, like, all the new things you do. You gotta adjust, ’cause you want it.”
The store pushed these women to see life options from a different perspective. They explained that in the store they thought aspirationally about what they really wanted. They were better aware of what was less important in their lives when they saw these unsatisfying choices nestled up alongside the ones that brought joy. This experience encouraged each woman not only to dream big about what she wanted across every aspect of her life but also to consider how these aspirations would feasibly work together. Some women felt emboldened to admit that they did not want to experience a traditional marriage, and felt content to foster connections with others through meaningful friendships or solo parenting. Others could now say they planned to leave careers that came with cachet for less glamorous ones, realizing this was how they would feel satisfied. Assuming a wider perspective by considering how all parts of their identity might coalesce helped them to realize what mattered most to them, and what could be sacrificed. As Tasha said, the experience helped her realize that “I need to upgrade my perspective on life and what I want.”
The wide bracket gave these women the strength to recommit to a set of goals that was personally gratifying, and to push back against others’ expectations. They were more likely to break from the social norm.
I knew the women I worked with were unique, but I wondered whether there was evidence of wide brackets affecting resistance to conformity outside this context. I turned to the work of a social psychologist named Dominic Packer, who had asked a similar question in his research. In Packer’s study, a group of young adults considered what aspects of their community could benefit from improvement. And they all had thoughts to share on what needed to be changed in their neighborhoods and at school. Then the researchers gave them information about what the social norms were for expressing their beliefs. In particular, they learned that their peers disapproved of the expression of critical opinions. The researchers also manipulated the focus of participants’ attention. Some considered whether to share their criticisms while assuming a narrow focus, whereas others made that consideration while assuming a wide bracket. Though all the participants wanted to see certain things about their community changed for the better, the question was whether they would conform to the social norm that their peers had established. Would they remain silent because they knew their peers thought that was right, or would they voice their concerns?
Just as the women shopping in my store were more ambitious and less conventional once they had assumed a wide bracket, the young adults Packer studied were more likely to defy societal expectations when they assumed a wide bracket. Those who wanted to make change happen but knew that sharing dissenting opinions was a social taboo were more likely to speak openly when they assumed a wide bracket, compared to those who took a narrow focus. A wide bracket encouraged them to see beyond the immediate social pressures to say silent. It gave them the strength to push back against expectations and to do what they thought was best for themselves and society.
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Thinking about changing course can be intimidating. A good bit of trepidation might come from what we consider that change to represent. If we conceptualize change as failure, then it comes as no surprise that we might try to avoid it. But if we think of it as simply finding another route to a goal we already had, then it might be something we more readily accept.
College students aspiring to become doctors regularly cite the extremely challenging nature of their biology course as the reason they leave the premed track. Leaving science, though, does not have to mean that they have failed in their attempt to join the medical profession. In fact, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 45 percent of people accepted to medical school in 2018 held degrees in other fields, such as math or the humanities. Changing majors does not necessarily mean changing career possibilities. It might just mean finding another route to get there.