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choice
You choose the middle option because it looks balanced.
The compromise effect is the tendency to avoid extremes when choosing between items, favoring the option that sits in the middle of a presented range.
Companies use this by placing a high-priced item next to a mid-range one to make the latter feel like a reasonable, safe choice. You are not picking the item for its features, but for its position on the scale.
Your choice was made for you by the options next to it.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Itamar Simonson, 1989
- What the check found
- The definition accurately reflects Simonson's 1989 paper, which pioneered the study of how intermediate alternatives are disproportionately chosen in a set.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.