Decoy Effect
Has anyone heard of the "Decoy Effect"? This was something I heard Saturday, listening to some political analysts on NPR. I know - me, listening to political analysts - what's the world coming to?
Anyway, here's how they explained it: Suppose you have two restaurants. One is a 3 star restaurant that's 3 miles away. The other is a 5 star restaurant that is 5 miles away. If you ask people which they would choose, some would choose one, some would choose the other.
But now let's add in another restaurant. Suppose this restaurant is a 2 star restaurant which is 4 miles away. No one chooses this option, because it's clearly not as good an option as either of the other two.
Similarly, if instead of adding a 2 star restaurant that's 4 miles away, if you add a 4 star restaurant that's 6 miles away, no one will choose that one either.
However (and here's where it gets interesting) Even though no one chooses the third option, that third option changes how people choose between the other two. In the first case, people are more likely to choose the 3 star restaurant, whereas in the second case, people are more likely to choose the 5 star restaurant, and in neither case does the choice ratio match what it was when the third option was not present.
Odd, isn't it? The option no one chooses functions as a decoy - even though no one chooses it, it still changes the choice process.
The reason is that people compare that third choice to both of the others, and discover that one of the options is better than the third option in all respects, while the other is only better in one respect. Thus, we draw the conclusion that one is clearly better than the other.
That wasn't very clear. Let's try this: you've got the following restaurants:
2 star, 4 miles away
3 star, 3 miles away
5 star, 5 miles away
In this case, more people will choose the 3 star. Why? Because it is both closer and better than the 2 star restaurant, while the 5 star restaurant, although it is better is not closer.
Flip that around:
3 star, 3 miles away
4 star, 6 miles away
5 star, 5 miles away
In this case, more people choose the 5 star restaurant, because it is both better and closer than the 4 star, whereas the 3 star is only closer
So a choice we would never pick, still alters our choices.
The point the analysts were making was this: in a political race, if you have two frontrunners, even though the other candidates don't stand a chance, they are still very important to the race, because they can change the way people vote, simply by being in the race.
I thought that was interesting.
On a completely different subject: Tile Puzzler hit a landmark yesterday: as of yesterday, site members and visitors have solved a combined total of 10,000 puzzles!
Posted On Apr 16, 2007 at 5:15 AM
On Apr 16, 2007 Mr. T wrote: Fascinating. This sounds like "NPR meets NUMB3RS"!
Doug Replied: yep. I was pretty sure you'd enjoy that!
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