This video presents Dan Ariely’s speech at the TED Conference. This video item concerns itself with the decision making in our everyday life. Dan Ariely makes the emphasis on the fact that bad and improvident decisions are inevitable like taxes and death. He observes the role of moral codes, emotional states and peer pressure influences in decision making in economic sphere as well as in our private life. This topic is quite interesting for me as far as understanding the process of decision making helps to make more reasonable and good decisions.
Dan Ariely provides interesting examples during his speech to demonstrate how the concept of illusion influences our everyday decisions. Two examples with the length of the horizontal and vertical tables and the color of two squares show that a human mind is disposed to be influenced with the concept of illusion. In our real life, when we make important decisions, it may seem to us we are right but in fact, it is only the illusion of the rightness of this or that decision. More than that, Dan Ariely demonstrates how external factors or cunning policy of other people may influence our decisions. In fact, when we don’t know what decision to make, we pick what has already been chosen for us. Ariely provides a wide range of examples of factors or propositions which seem firstly senseless but they influence a human mind and may predict their decision.
The example of two different propositions provided in internet, namely the costs of the print and web subscriptions demonstrates a cunning trick of the company. The web subscription costs $59, print subscription costs $125 and both of them also costs 125$. When there are three positions, most people choose the last one where both subscriptions cost 125$. If there is no the second position providing only the print subscription for 125$, the first position which is cheaper is more preferable. In fact, the second position is useless as far as no one chooses it but it helps to choose people the third one which doesn’t differ from the second in price but includes two propositions for the same cost. We may observe how such interesting methods may influence our decision and we don’t even pay attention to them. It seems to us that this decision is our own but it is only the illusion. In fact, we are caught in the toils and we make the decision which is expected from us to make. These facts and methods were new for me. I have not paid attention to these tricks before during decision making.
Another interesting example concerns itself with the appearance. Dan Ariely demonstrates two pictures of men, Tom and Jerry. In fact it is quite difficult to choose who is more handsome. When Ariely provides an ugly version of Tom, Tom seems to be the most handsome and when there is an ugly version of Jerry, Jerry is paid more attention from the girls. When people may compare between an ugly version and the original one, they choose the original one without any hesitations. But when there are two original versions such as Tom and Jerry, it is quite difficult to make a decision. This method is widely used in the economy that is why it is more profitable to provide an ugly version which makes the customer choose the best one.
This video has changed my point of view on the concept of illusion during decision making. This opinion based information with persuasive examples demonstrates the influence of other people’s tricks over our own decision making.
References
Ariely, D. Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions? Web.