Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. Dan Ariely
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Название: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions

Автор: Dan Ariely

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Общая психология

Серия:

isbn: 9780007319923

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СКАЧАТЬ I will henceforth, and for good reason, call the “decoy”). In other words, suppose that I removed the decoy so that the choices would be the ones seen in the figure below:

      Would the students respond as before (16 for the Internet only and 84 for the combination)?

      Certainly they would react the same way, wouldn't they? After all, the option I took out was one that no one selected, so it should make no difference. Right?

      What could have possibly changed their minds? Nothing rational, I assure you. It was the mere presence of the decoy that sent 84 of them to the print-and-Internet option (and 16 to the Internet-only option). And the absence of the decoy had them choosing differently, with 32 for print-and-Internet and 68 for Internet-only.

      This is not only irrational but predictably irrational as well. Why? I'm glad you asked.

      LET ME OFFER you this visual demonstration of relativity.

      As you can see, the middle circle can't seem to stay the same size. When placed among the larger circles, it gets smaller. When placed among the smaller circles, it grows bigger. The middle circle is the same size in both positions, of course, but it appears to change depending on what we place next to it.

      This might be a mere curiosity, but for the fact that it mirrors the way the mind is wired: we are always looking at the things around us in relation to others. We can't help it. This holds true not only for physical things—toasters, bicycles, puppies, restaurant entrées, and spouses—but for experiences such as vacations and educational options, and for ephemeral things as well: emotions, attitudes, and points of view.

      We always compare jobs with jobs, vacations with vacations, lovers with lovers, and wines with wines. All this relativity reminds me of a line from the film Crocodile Dundee, when a street hoodlum pulls a switchblade against our hero, Paul Hogan. “You call that a knife?” says Hogan incredulously, withdrawing a bowie blade from the back of his boot. “Now this,” he says with a sly grin, “is a knife.”

      RELATIVITY IS (RELATIVELY) easy to understand. But there's one aspect of relativity that consistently trips us up. It's this: we not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable—and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.

      That may be a confusing thought, so let me give you an example. Suppose you're shopping for a house in a new town. Your real estate agent guides you to three houses, all of which interest you. One of them is a contemporary, and two are colonials. All three cost about the same; they are all equally desirable; and the only difference is that one of the colonials (the “decoy”) needs a new roof and the owner has knocked a few thousand dollars off the price to cover the additional expense.

      So which one will you choose?

      The chances are good that you will not choose the contemporary and you will not choose the colonial that needs the new roof, but you will choose the other colonial. Why? Here's the rationale (which is actually quite irrational). We like to make decisions based on comparisons. In the case of the three houses, we don't know much about the contemporary (we don't have another house to compare it with), so that house goes on the sidelines. But we do know that one of the colonials is better than the other one. That is, the colonial with the good roof is better than the one with the bad roof. Therefore, we will reason that it is better overall and go for the colonial with the good roof, spurning the contemporary and the colonial that needs a new roof.

      To better understand how relativity works, consider the following illustration:

      In the left side of this illustration we see two options, each of which is better on a different attribute. Option (A) is better on attribute 1—let's say quality. Option (B) is better on attribute 2—let's say beauty. Obviously these are two very different options and the choice between them is not simple. Now consider what happens if we add another option, called (−A) (see the right side of the illustration). This option is clearly worse than option (A), but it is also very similar to it, making the comparison between them easy, and suggesting that (A) is not only better than (−A) but also better than (B).

      In essence, introducing (−A), the decoy, creates a simple relative comparison with (A), and hence makes (A) look better, not just relative to (−A), but overall as well. As a consequence, the inclusion of (−A) in the set, even if no one ever selects it, makes people more likely to make (A) their final choice.

      Does this selection process sound familiar? Remember the pitch put together by the Economist? The marketers there knew that we didn't know whether we wanted an Internet subscription or a print subscription. But they figured that, of the three options, the print-and-Internet combination would be the offer we would take.

      Here's another example of the decoy effect. Suppose you are planning a honeymoon in Europe. You've already decided to go to one of the major romantic cities and have narrowed your choices to Rome and Paris, your two favorites. The travel agent presents you with the vacation packages for each city, which includes airfare, hotel accommodations, sightseeing tours, and a free breakfast every morning. Which would you select?

      For most people, the decision between a week in Rome and a week in Paris is not effortless. Rome has the Coliseum; Paris, the Louvre. Both have a romantic ambience, fabulous food, and fashionable shopping. It's not an easy call. But suppose you were offered a third option: Rome without the free breakfast, called –Rome or the decoy.

      If you were to consider these three options (Paris, Rome, –Rome), you would immediately recognize that whereas Rome with the free breakfast is about as appealing as Paris with the free breakfast, the inferior option, which is Rome without the free breakfast, is a step down. The comparison between the clearly inferior option (–Rome) makes Rome with the free breakfast seem even better. In fact, –Rome makes Rome with the free breakfast look so good that you judge it to be even better than the difficult-to-compare option, Paris with the free breakfast.

      ONCE YOU SEE the decoy effect in action, you realize that it is the secret agent in more decisions than we could imagine. It even helps us decide whom to date—and, ultimately, whom to marry. Let me describe an experiment that explored just this subject.

      As students hurried around MIT one cold weekday, I asked some of them whether they would allow me to take their pictures for a study. In some cases, I got disapproving looks. A few students walked away. But most of them were happy to participate, and before long, the card in my digital camera was filled with images of smiling students. I returned to my office and printed 60 of them—30 of women and 30 of men.

      The following week I made an unusual request of 25 of my undergraduates. I asked them to pair the 30 photographs of men and the 30 of women by physical attractiveness (matching the men with other men, and the women with other women). That is, I had them pair the Brad Pitts and the George Clooneys of MIT, as well as the Woody Allens and the Danny DeVitos (sorry, Woody and Danny). Out of these 30 pairs, I selected the six pairs—three female pairs and three male pairs—that my students СКАЧАТЬ