Smoking: Quitting, wanting to quit, and wanting to want to quit
Glen Whitman ponders smokers' expressed desires for quitting:
“A study of more than 32,000 adults in 2000 found that about 23.3 percent were current smokers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. … Among those defined as current smokers -- people who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lives and still smoke regularly -- 70 percent said they would like to quit.” [source] I’ve seen this statistic repeated endlessly – in press releases about the Great American Smoke-Out, for instance, and in pointed public-service ads on VH1.
But what does this statistic really tell us? Does it reflect actual preferences of real people? Does it reflect “meta-preferences,” i.e., the preferences that people would prefer to have? Why should we take these statements at face value?
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If lots of people say, “I want to quit smoking,” maybe they really do wish to quit, all things considered, including the pain and difficulty of quitting. Or maybe they just know the “right” answer to the question. Quitting smoking is hard; saying you’d like to quit is easy.
As a 20+ year smoker who quit five years ago, I can only speak for myself. I think they are expressing meta-preferences.
I "quit" several times for periods lasting days to months before I quit the last time. Those times were very unpleasant. I didn't really want to quit; I wanted to be a non-smoker. Not smoking would be great. Quitting smoking was a real pain in the ass. I wanted to want to quit.
The last time, I really wanted to quit and it was relatively painless -- at least after the first couple of days.
I think that when smokers say they want to quit -- but don't quit -- maybe what they really mean is that they want to be a nonsmoker.
I agree that, in some sense, it's a meta-preference being expressed. But meta-preferences, just like run-of-the-mill preferences, have to cash out in terms of action. If I have a preference for fugu, the potentially lethal Japanese blowfish, that means I want to eat fugu even given the risk involved. Similarly, if you have a meta-preference for non-smoking, that should mean you want to be a non-smoker even given the costs involved in becoming one.
If we remove the costs (whether the poison in fugu or the pain in quitting), then we're talking about wishes, not preferences.
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