We sometimes complain that we are bored, and so we need to “change up” our products, services, and life habits. We often says this is due to our general preference for variety. But we are actually quite selective in when we want variety. In many areas of our lives we have little variety, and that doesn’t bother us much.

Toothpaste and mouthwash have flavors, but I use the same flavors for months at a time. My breakfasts are mostly alone, and have only minor variations from day to day. Dinners I usually eat with my wife, and we rotate between maybe a dozen different standard dishes. I often eat lunch out with a half dozen colleagues, and we rotate between a half dozen or so places, and in each place I vary what I order. When we host someone who visits from out of town, we go to a wider range of places.

The clothes I sleep in vary very little, and the clothes I wear around the house vary less than the clothes I wear to the office, which vary less than the clothes I wear to special occasions. Under-clothes vary less than more visible clothes. In my home, when we’ve repainted, or bought new furnishings or wall fixings, we tend to change things more often in our more visible rooms. We change the yard the most often, and the living room and entryway the next most often.

Products like cars, couches and refrigerators vary more on the outsides that more people can see than they do on the insides that few people see. We more often rearrange visible things like the placement of furniture compared to less visible things like where clothes are located in our chests or closets, or where dishes sit in kitchen cabinets. Advertising can change the images and attitudes associated with products, even when products don’t physically change, and we have more ads for types of products whose use is more visible to more people.

The general pattern here seems to be that variety is social – we prefer variety more for things that have wider social scopes. It is as if we personally don’t care much for variety, but we need our larger social circles to see that we can afford and tolerate a great deal of variety.