You’re putting away groceries, sorting through your purchases and placing them in the pantry, the fridge, or in your bread box. You get to the bottom and pull out the last three items-3 candy bars. “What?” you say to yourself as you look for a place to hide them from curious hands. How did you leave the store buying this garbage? And how did you ever end up leaving with three?
This type of psychological warfare is exactly the premise of ABC’s newest primetime show, Mind Games. It features two brothers who run an agency capitalizing on our patterns of behavior as observed in studies and experiments. The show should have been called, “The Studies Show”, but no one asked my opinion.
But how believable is this agency? Hate to break it to you, but you fall victim to this kind of manipulation every day and it’s not just from advertising. You are manipulated at every hour of the day by different verticals and most of us write it off as confidence. Coincidence it is not. We behave in truly predictably patterns that companies and people use to their advantage.
Dan Ariely is a leading researcher in all things behavior economics and has written books on various studies he has done based on prior research. His fascinating books give us a glimpse at our “irrational” behavior that allows our manipulation. He’s not saying we should live in a constant state of fear of inception but by reading these kinds of works we can arm ourselves with some defense mechanisms to ensure our decisions are our decisions and not the ideas of others.
They’re not Jedi mind tricks-it’s simple psychology and human behavior. To give you a taste of what you’ll find in Ariely’s writing (and probably on the show) here are a few patterns you can use to help things go your way, or detect when someone is making them go their way.
1) By setting up a “good apple” next to a “bad apple”, the “good apple” will look even better next to not only the “bad apple” but the “oranges”, “blueberries”, and “watermelons” too!
The Pros: Real estate agents will often show you two listings that look similar (2 traditional homes) and one that is completely different (a contemporary) with the goal of selling you the better traditional home. Since the “better” traditional home already looks better when placed side by side with the worse traditional home, to the buyer it looks better all around even when you don’t have an equivalent comparison to the contemporary home.
Tip: Take a “less hot” version of yourself out for drinks and watch the interest peak in your favor (just don’t tell your friend!).
2) Decoy pricing is made to lure people to the target price by making it look like a middle option when in reality it is the only “option” they are interested in.
The Pros: You’ll never order the priciest thing on the menu, but you will order the 2nd most expensive thing. Restaurants will create an arbitrary high price for a random item so there will always be something “else” that is the most expensive dish. The plate they wanted you to buy the whole time sits just below (price wise) the most expensive dish.
Tip: Read options and think about what the offers actually are. Throwing in things for free is usually a red flag for manipulation.
3) Men will respond more to women when they are fertile and ovulating due to their primal instinct to reproduce. They also respond to the color red more positively and will find the same woman more attractive if she wears the hue, even when it is a turtleneck.
The Pros: Valentine’s Day. It’s pretty obvious.
Tip: Men are willing to spend more money on you when you are NOT on birth control from your distinct pheromones. Their instincts of procreation make them more liable to spring for spending when their primal instincts think proving they can provide for you will attract you and cement you as a mate.
4) Decisions made in the heat of passion are markedly different from decisions made in a normal state.
The Pros: Advertisers play to your emotions because they understand you are in less control over your urges when you are acting on sentiments.
Tip: When sexually stimulated, people are more willing to make risky sexual choices even when they have proven before to understand the possible consequences. Always carry protection because in the heat of the moment you won’t be able to stop it.
5) When people are “primed” with races, they tend to make decisions and have thoughts based on the stereotypes of the primes later on.
The Pros: Movie theaters slip split-second frames of popcorn and soda into movies to get you subliminally thinking about food. Next thing you know you’re headed to the concession stand.
Tip: To make people afraid of a group, pair that group with a negative thing (like guns) and you will associate that group with the negative thing. On a diet? Keep showing yourself pictures of Gremlins before each time you eat ice cream.
6) People are drawn to free more than they are attracted to a better value. Free “sub-par” is more appealing than marked down “premium”.
Translation: We’d rather have free beer than 90% off a 1940 wine. Even when a deal is very, very good, it does not look as good as the free option.
If you haven’t caught your flaw with the candy bar by now I’ll let you in on the secret. You see a candy bar for $2. That’s too much for one candy bar, you think. But then you see the sign for the sale. “5 candy bars for $7!” You do the math. It’s a way better deal with each bar costing less than on their own but five candy bars? That’s too many. Then you see the other sign. “3 candy bars for $5!” Well that’s not as great as the 5 for 7 deal but it’s better than $2 each. Three bars, that’s reasonable. So you take them and reason that as long as you don’t eat them at the same time.
You buy the bars and don’t realize the goal was to get you to buy the 3 bars the whole time. The other options are just available to allow you to compare the deals and make buying more candy than you really needed or wanted reasonable, an actually wise choice. Crazy, huh?
**I highly recommend reading Ariely’s books Predictably Irrational and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. They are written to entertain and inform, a perfect blending of both. **
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