Are we in control of our own decisions?
How our brains can get tricked into making irrational choices
Take a look at the two tiles A and B in this picture. A is dark grey and B light grey, right? Well actually both of them are the exact same color. Here is the same picture with the A and B tiles connected.
If you are still not buying it, take a print out of the first picture and see for yourself how easy it is to trick our eyes. The craziest part is that even after you have seen the explanation, the illusion does not disappear. If you look at the first picture again, you would still see A and B as a light and a dark tile.
Millions of years of evolution have gone into perfecting our visions. We spend so much time seeing things and we even have a part of the brain dedicated to it. Yet we can be tricked into seeing things that are not true. Imagine how easy would it be to trick us at something we are not that great at, like making financial decisions.
The tricky “Useless” option
Here’s an old ad from The Economist website offering subscriptions for their offline and online services. You can get the website subscription for 59$, the print for 125$, or you can choose the combo of both for 125$. Which one would you choose?
While we might not agree on print vs. online options, one thing is certain that the only print option seems useless. No one would choose that when they can get the combo for the same price. Why would they even give this option to the users?
There was a study done where a group of MIT students was given similar choices. And as expected 84% chose the combo option, and no one chose the 2nd option.
Another group was then given just the two options — just website for 59$ or just print for 125$. The results were surprising, as the cheaper option was more popular now, with 64% people opting for it.
So the only print option, which we thought of as useless, actually had a big effect on the decision making of the people. It drove them to spend more.
This sort of strategy is quite popular in marketing. If you want to increase the sales of a product, just introduce an uglier ( and maybe slightly cheaper) alternative to the product and watch more and more people go for the expensive option. Does anyone remember the iPhone C?
What can we do about it?
Not much to be honest. Just like the optical illusion, even with the secret explained to you, you would most likely get tricked again. It seems irrational to settle for the regular sized meal when the guy behind the counter offers to upgrade it to large for a ridiculously small amount.
The best we can do is accept the fact that this is one of our mental limitations. We have done so much to overcome our physical limitations as a species. Maybe if we start accepting the mental ones as well something can be done about them.
This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog — Understanding Stoicism — II