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decision making
You can be nudged into expensive choices by irrelevant options.
A 1982 study found that adding an inferior decoy option significantly increases the preference for a more expensive premium choice.
When presented with two options, you weigh them carefully. When a third, clearly worse option is added, it makes the premium option seem like an objectively better deal. The comparison shifts from the items themselves to the relative value provided.
Your choices are often shaped by what you aren't picking.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Joel Huber, 1982
- What the check found
- This is a well-established finding in behavioral economics; the seminal paper is 'Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives' by Huber, Payne, and Puto (1982).
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.