#10 Default Bias: Why Australians take their organs to the grave

With thousands of decisions to make every day, wouldn’t it just be way easier if some of them were made for us? In this episode, Mel and Dan unpack how the default bias influences everything from binge-watching to voter turnout, and explain how marketers can become the Kleenex of their category.

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Dan: 00:19 Hey, welcome to Bad Decisions. The podcasts that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel: 00:23 Why we think what we think.

Dan: 00:24 And how to explore this stuff for fun and commercial gain.

Mel: 00:27 I'm Dr Mel Weinberg, I am a performance psychologist.

Dan: 00:30 I'm Dan Monheit, co-founder of Hardhat, a creative agency built for today.

Mel: 00:34 Here we go.

Dan: 00:42 Hey Mel.

Mel: 00:43 Yeah.

Dan: 00:44 I want to take you all the way back to one of the earliest moments where I honestly felt myself falling truly and deeply in love with behavioural economics.

Mel: 00:44 This sounds really romantic.

Dan: 00:54 This is kind of romantic. I was sitting at home by myself watching a video of a guy who I may or may not have a gigantic man crush on, Dan Ariely.

Mel: 00:54 Okay.

Dan: 01:02 Hi Dan. I know you're a listener, and he was talking about the outrageous situation that exists in America that I've since learned also exists in Australia around organ donation rates, and it's this crazy situation where despite us being the lucky country and a very well developed, very progressive first world nation, lots of great things going for us - the proportion of us who actually end up with our tissue and organ donated once we die is less than 10 percent.

Now, this doesn't just sound bad. This really is bad, especially when you look at it by global standards. Other countries in the world like Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, these guys have organ donation rates of 98 percent or higher. Some of them even have organ donation rates of 100 percent. And here we are, we're all the way on the other side of the world. Maybe we just get a little selfish or something on our island over here, but less than one in 10 of us actually end up donating our organs and tissues when we die, which is just diabolical.

Mel: 02:02 So basically Australia is a really lucky country as long as you're not dead.

Dan: 02:06 Yeah. Or on the organ waiting list.

Mel: 02:09 Right.

Dan: 02:09 Other than that, great place to live. Send your friends and family out here.

Mel: 02:13 The interesting thing about this, particularly from my perspective, is that when you actually ask Australians whether they would like to donate their organs, three in four people say, “yes, of course I'd love to.” There's this huge discrepancy between the 10 percent of us, or less than 10 percent of us who actually donate our organs and yet 75 percent of us really would like to. We really want to do the right thing.

Dan: 02:35 Yeah. Which just goes to show we are not only selfish, but we also lie. Are we lying? Is that what's happening? Most of us also lying?

Mel: 02:43 Pretty much.

Dan: 02:44 I think it's called, is it virtue signalling?

Mel: 02:46 Maybe.

Dan: 02:46 Anyway, that's another episode.

Mel: 02:48 Let's look it up.

Dan: 02:48 Okay, cool.

Mel: 02:48 So the thing that's happening here and the reason that we are in this situation where you've got a whole bunch of people who say that “this is something that I'd really like to do, a morally great thing to do, count me in” and yet barely any of us do it is because the default in Australia is not to donate our organs.

Dan: 03:08 Exactly. Because what happens in these other countries that I've just mentioned before is that as soon as you get your driver's licence, you're an organ donor, unless you specifically want to go to the trouble of opting out and as we all know in Australia or for our Australian listeners, hear you are not an organ donor, unless you specifically go to the effort of going to the website and registering your details and opting yourself in.

Mel: 03:29 So the reason we're talking about this is that it demonstrates the power of what we know as the default bias.

Dan: 03:35 Oh, did you say default bias?

Mel: 03:37 I said default bias.

Dan: 03:37 Is that our heuristic for the episode?

Mel: 03:39 It is. We need some default music. It should just be something really plain and boring and just whatever. Whatever you've got really the closest easiest thing that you've got, just as the default.

Dan: 03:48 I would like actually, Kops can you just get your iPod and put it on shuffle and just whatever the first thing that plays is, that's what we're going with.

Speaker 3: 03:54 (Shania Twain singing) Oh, oh you think you're special, oh, oh you think you're think you're something else. Okay, so you're a rocket scientist, that don't impress me much, so ya...

Dan: 03:54 Okay. Kops is a big Shania Twain fan.

Mel: 04:15 So the default bias refers to the idea that basically whatever we put as the default, even if it's something completely random, the default option has a disproportionately higher chance of being selected.

Dan: 04:29 This sounds terrible. This sounds like these are going to cause us to make all sorts of terrible decisions in life.

Mel: 04:34 This is the thing. It could be hugely problematic if people use it for the wrong reasons.

Dan: 04:38 I mean, not even could be like let's be honest here, six out of 10 people who would be very happy to donate organs and tissue actually take the organs and tissue with them in a box in the ground when they're dead, when they have no need for such organs and tissues anymore just because of this one dirty little heuristic.

Mel: 04:56 Like in this case, it works out not in our favour from an Australian perspective, but we also live in a country where the default option is to vote. On the flip side, yes, maybe not as many of us donate our organs as in many other countries, but to maybe compensate for that, we have large voter turnout rates.

Dan: 05:16 That's great.

Mel: 05:17 Right. So we had something like 94 percent of Australians of eligible Australians. Not sure what the other six percent were doing, 94 percent of eligible Australians voted in our last federal election. Whereas for example, in the US it was something less than 60 percent, and look how that turned out.

Dan: 05:33 Well look how ours turned out, and I don't really think that I'll go on and tell people on the organ waiting list that, you know what, at least you know, that you're in a country that votes the next election is really any consolation.

Mel: 05:43 The thing is that, like from a broader of societal perspective, these have actually big implications. Like voter turnout is a sign of civic participation, which is associated with social capital, and we can go on and talk about all the benefits these has for actually building strong communities, but something as simple as putting voting or making voting as the default that you basically have to vote unless you have a very, very good reason or want to get fined has huge implications for the way we actually function the society.

Dan: 06:10 Also excellent for sausage sizzle sales.

Mel: 06:12 Okay.

Dan: 06:13 Are there particular places in our life where we are especially vulnerable to default biases?

Mel: 06:19 Well, like with any of the heuristics that we talk about here, situations when we're low on information...

Dan: 06:25 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mel: 06:25 Or where we don't really care.

Dan: 06:27 Yeah. I guess there's this idea, especially if you're in the marketing world, that we think that people really want to optimise every purchase they make. If we happen to be a marketer working for a washing detergent company, we would like to think that when people go and buy a washing detergent, they are really trying to get the best value for their money, buy a brand that they feel great about. It's going to deliver them everything that they want.

Mel: 06:50 And you want like the brightest colours, the whitest whites.

Dan: 06:53 The loveliest smell.

Mel: 06:54 Of course.

Dan: 06:55 But the reality is, for all but a very small handful of purchases that any one of us make in a year or even a lifetime, we're not optimised as we are, what we call satisfices. We might all optimise for one or two categories in our lives. For some people it's when they buy a car, they really want to go through all the details of getting the best thing they can get or for other people it's sneakers or whiskey or handbags or whatever it is. But the vast majority of things in life, the vast majority of things we purchase, we're just trying to satisfy us. We're just trying to buy the thing that gives us the least likelihood of dying either actually or socially.

Mel: 07:30 Here's the part of the show where I give you a big word...

Dan: 07:30 Come on.

Mel: 07:33 To describe the little words, that you use even though optimised and satisfice are pretty good.

Dan: 07:37 Good.

Mel: 07:38 Like well done.

Dan: 07:38 Thanks. Not feeling patronised towards at all. Do you want to sound it out for me. What's the word?

Mel: 07:44 Say it with me, it's called the acceptability threshold.

Dan: 07:48 I got this, the acceptability threshold.

Mel: 07:48 Easy.

Dan: 07:48 See. Nailed it.

Mel: 07:52 The acceptability threshold is basically the minimum standard that we're willing to accept.

Dan: 07:56 Like what you look for in a podcast co-host?

Mel: 07:58 Something like that.

Dan: 08:00 Proud to have met your accessibility threshold ...

Mel: 08:03 Acceptability.

Dan: 08:03 Damn it. Acceptability threshold.

Mel: 08:06 There we go, we'll get there.

Dan: 08:07 Yep. I guess what we're seeing here, is that for all but a couple of categories where we're really looking to optimise what we're doing, we're happy to just take whatever will just get us through, whatever passes our acceptability threshold and that's really because, to be honest, we're kind of lazy, we're kind of busy and we're just looking for some sweet, sweet relief from the thousands upon thousands of decisions we'd have to make every day from scratch if default options didn't exist.

Mel: 08:33 The default option serves a hugely important function. It can guide us towards sort of maybe the right direction...

Dan: 08:40 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mel: 08:40 Or the best direction for us, or it can totally detract us and take us towards something that will just be like, you know what, close enough is good enough. I'll just take that. The thing that I love about the default option, and I want to bring this in, is that when I was thinking about it, the default option is like a super heuristic.

Dan: 08:58 Super heuristic!

Mel: 08:59 It's like the superhero of heuristics because it actually incorporates a few of the heuristics we've talked about into sort of understanding why it works and the power that it has. The default option works for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that there's an element of social proof in it. So we've talked about social proof and how we'll basically just do what everybody else does. When we see a default option, we pretty much believe that that's what everybody else is doing and if it's good enough for everybody else, it's good enough for me.

Dan: 09:26 Okay. So like when you're on a website trying to buy some sort of online software as an example, and you say the popular package that people buy: so there is the cheap, there's the medium, there's the premium. The popular one is always the medium one. So I guess that is a default option, and it's also social proof.

Mel: 09:42 Correct. Another thing that comes into play is the idea of decision fatigue. We talked about this when we talked about choice paradox and the idea that, even though we'd like to think that we have so many choices we're really not very good at making decisions when we have a whole lot of choice. The default gives us an easy here you go, just take this, let me take the worry away from you and all the complexity of making a choice away from you and just take the default.

Dan: 10:06 Yeah. So anybody who's been to McDonald's or has worked at McDonald's would know that if you go up to the counter and just order a big Mac meal, if the person on the other side of the counter knows what they're doing, they will say to you “oh, is that a large meal?” Because they know that one option is to stand here and evaluate, “well, I don't know. Is it a large meal? How hungry am I? How thirsty am I? When is the next time I'm going to be able to eat or drink something? When did I last eat or drink something?” Or the other option is just to go, Yes! And just get on with it and pay them the money and go away for your food to come out.

Mel: 10:34 Way easier.

Dan: 10:34 Way easier.

Mel: 10:35 And this is the thing. This sort of speaks into the next one that comes into play, which is that there's a confirmation bias involved as well, which is if the default option is presented to us, I mean we have to have a pretty strong reason to not go with that option.

Dan: 10:46 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mel: 10:47 We've got to be pretty sure that that's not going to be the right thing for us when it's way easier. Like you said, just go. Yep, Yep, that sounds good and to think of all the reasons why, yep that'll be good enough for me.

Dan: 10:55 I mean the person who suggested it is wearing a visor and a name tag, so clearly they're the expert.

Mel: 11:00 They look pretty reputable.

Dan: 11:01 They know that large is the right way to go.

Mel: 11:03 They know fries.

Dan: 11:04 And who am I, just as a layman to argue with that. Yeah. I'll have a dessert too. Thank you.

Mel: 11:09 Default bias is a super heuristic, and I'm going to coin that term because I don't even know if it exists, but you heard it here first, super heuristic.

Dan: 11:16 I feel like it's the Voltron of heuristics.

Mel: 11:18 It can be.

Dan: 11:19 Like all the other heuristics come together and unite to make default bias.

Mel: 11:22 Yeah. This is captain heuristic right here at West Cape.

Dan: 11:25 I like it.

Mel: 11:26 That's how we know it's super. But it really is one of those things where it's so hard to avoid and so powerful because it pretty much brings together a few of the other heuristics that we've talked about.

Dan: 11:36 Yeah and I guess the thing about the default bias is once you realise it's happening, you start noticing it everywhere.

Mel: 11:44 Let's talk about some of the examples of where we find it.

Dan: 11:46 Lets. Oh, you want me to talk about some examples?

Mel: 11:46 If you wouldn't mind.

Dan: 11:49 Okay, sure thing. I guess one of the places that you often see this is when somebody who knows what they're doing is emailing you, trying to set up an appointment, they'll always suggest a time. Rather than saying, “hey, it would be great to catch up some time, let me know when you're free.” It's like, Oh God, that's putting a lot of work on the other person. The default bias would encourage that person to “say, hey, we should really catch up some time. How are you Wednesday at 2:00 PM or Friday at midday?” What they've done is they've given two great default options I could take, which makes it a path of much less resistance to just say yes and end up going to a meeting I probably don't want to go to.

Mel: 12:21 That applies also, it applies one thing in terms of setting up meetings, but it applies more generally as well. Let me give you some research if I may.

‘Doc’: 12:32 [Back to the Future soundbite] “If this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re going to see some serious shit”

Mel: 12:38 We're going to talk about a study that was looking at the opt in versus opt out scenarios with regard to flu vaccination. Basically, we've got a workplace here, and they set up two conditions. It was a condition where a group of employees were sent an email that said, listen, we're going to offer you all the chance to have the flu vaccine. Please call this number to make an appointment and book in your time.

Dan: 12:59 That's sweet of them.

Mel: 13:00 Yeah. The other email that was sent to another group of employees basically said, specified a date and a time. So yours might've said, “hey Dan, we`re really pleased to offer you the chance to have a flu vaccine at your workplace. Your appointment is next Tuesday at 4:00 PM. Please call this number if you'd like to change or cancel."

Dan: 13:15 Got it.

Mel: 13:15 Some people have a time and date specified, other people have to opt in essentially, and basically what happened was the people who had their time and date specified were much more likely to attend their appointment and get the flu vaccine because all they had to do was just go along with the default that was set for them.

Dan: 13:31 Makes sense. I guess it's interesting in a lot of service based businesses that the default bias is kind of wrapped up in good customer service, and at some point you're just being preemptive and doing the right thing for the customer and sometimes that also aligns with the thing that you would most like them to do.

Mel: 13:47 It's like if you go into a retail store, and you grab something off the shelf and you haven't even maybe picked the right size and all of a sudden the salesperson comes up to you and he's like, hey, can I put that in the change room for you? And all of a sudden the things already in the change room and once it's in the change room you've basically bought it.

Dan: 14:01 You have to go and try it on at least.

Mel: 14:03 So you're basically being defaulted not into purchasing the product but into the behaviour immediately before it, that strongly predicts your purchasing behaviour.

Dan: 14:10 Trying stuff on is a good leading indicator for actually purchasing stuff.

Mel: 14:14 Yep.

Dan: 14:15 For me, I was going to say I try and steer away from religion in this show, but I really don't. I think this is like one of the most striking examples of default bias that of all of the religions in the world and who knows, there must be hundreds or thousands of religions in the world. The vast majority of people stay with the one they were born with it.

Mel: 14:31 Just lazy.

Dan: 14:32 So lucky for them, they were born into the exact right religion and they can just go down that path as opposed to going through the arduous, very tiring task of evaluating all of the world's religions and then deciding which if any, are actually the right choice for you and subscribing to that.

Mel: 14:50 Well `cause once you've been defaulted into it, you then spend the rest of your life in a confirmation bias.

Dan: 14:54 Exactly.

Mel: 14:54 Going about activities that reinforce the fact that your default option was the right one for you.

Dan: 15:00 Exactly. But hey religion is great, if you enjoy it good for you.

Mel: 15:03 And look anybody who watches Netflix is vulnerable to the default biases as well.

Dan: 15:07 I don't know what you're talking about. I absolutely sat down with the intention of watching four episodes back to back. It has nothing to do with that little next episode automatically starting in five, four, three, two. Okay, You got me.

Mel: 15:19 I’m in.

Dan: 15:21 I think they’ve actually reduced the time before which the next episode starts as well.

Mel: 15:25 To make it even harder for you...

Dan: 15:27 To stop. It's like, wait, where's the remote? It's started.

Mel: 15:30 It's already started, opening credits are rolling. May as well just watch the whole thing.

Dan: 15:34 Exactly.

Mel: 15:35 Alright. So tell me how brands can use this information

Dan: 15:38 Ethically. I mean for brands the most obvious, there's sort of the tier one way of using this is to say, look, anytime we put out options for people they're going to choose something, right? And if we make one of those options, the default, it will be selected a disproportionate amount of the time. It would be crazy not to set a default option that matches up with the thing that we would most like to sell. Whether that is the type of package or the way you structure a contract with the client about whether they pay at the start or the end of a phase or you know, just how long the service agreement goes for. You could set a default option of 12 months, or you could set a default option of 24 months and see if people argue with that, chances are they probably won't.

Mel: 16:18 Okay. That's tier one. What's tier two?

Dan: 16:20 I guess the next thing is a bit bigger and a bit meatier and it's that question of what things do we as a brand want to be the default option for? What do we want to be famous for?

Mel: 16:29 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dan: 16:30 And I think one of the most interesting recent examples of this is Beats Headphones. What these guys have done is all of their communications and all of their messaging of late is about the pregame ritual, right? They don't really show athletes playing the sport that they're famous for, but they show athletes in the team bus, in the locker room, coming through the tunnel, always with their Beats headphones on. And they sort of positioned themselves as the default choice for pregame preparation.

Mel: 16:57 Okay.

Dan: 16:57 Which is, you know, it's kinda like uncharted territory. Nobody had really owned that moment before. Everybody knew the moment happened, but nobody had really seized it. When you're seizing a new moment, you get a wonderful opportunity to present yourself as the default option, the Kleenex, the Blu Tack, the whatever it is for that particular category.

Mel: 17:15 Awesome. Is there a tier three?

Dan: 17:17 There's no tier three.

Mel: 17:17 Okay.

Dan: 17:17 Well, maybe you're the tier three. Can you elevate it?

Mel: 17:20 Well, let me flip it a little bit and instead of talking about brands, let's talk about the people on the other side. All right? If you are a smart consumer, you have to be aware that there is likely going to be a default option set for you. Right? And the question you have to ask yourself is, hang on, do I want to be defaulted? Do I care enough to not be defaulted? Right? Because the default option may be a completely random option that has no thought behind it at all. Or you may be dealing with a smart brand, who is trying to push you into … maybe pushed sounds a little rough.

Dan: 17:51 Encourage you into?

Mel: 17:51 Maybe they're trying to nudge. They're trying to nudge you into making a decision that actually benefits them. And may not be the best thing for you. So smart consumer will consider, do I really care? Am I happy to go with the default option or do I really know what I want and am I going to tell them what I want and not let them tell me.

Dan: 18:10 Maybe are you suggesting that we don't just have optimising and satisficing?  Maybe we need like a satisficing plus, like just give a little bit of a crap about this.

Mel: 18:18 Now we're going to have a whole choice paradox about whether you want to optimise, satisfice, satisfice plus.

Dan: 18:23 I guess what you're saying is, as consumers we need to be aware of when these default options are being pushed in front of us and even if you are just going to lie back and take it, at least be conscious that that's what's going on.

Mel: 18:33 Own it.

Dan: 18:33 Own it.

Mel: 18:34 All right, let's wrap it up.

Dan: 18:35 Cool. What we're talking about today is the default bias, which is the tendency to take the option that has been recommended for us as the default choice. And as it turns out, that option gets selected a disproportionately high amount of the time

Mel: 18:48 And it happens because we have so many decisions to make in our lives that sometimes then if it's something particularly we don't care about that much, it's easier to just go with the option that's presented to us and that's fine, but let's be aware of it. And let's own that space.

Dan: 19:00 That's right. And as marketers we need to think about a couple of things. One is when we're asking consumers to make choices, what is the choice that we most want them to select and how do we present that as the default option and as a business or as a brand, is there something that we want to become the default option for?

Mel: 19:16 Alright, where do we go from here?

Dan: 19:18 Well, this is the bit where we do our social media handles.

Mel: 19:20 Okay, let's do it.

Dan: 19:21 You go first

Mel: 19:23 Alright. You can find me on twitter, on Instagram @DrMelW. So, Dr. Mel W. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Dan: 19:31 You can find me on a bunch of those sites as well. And I am @DanMonheit, no doctor as we painfully learnt, a couple episodes back.

Mel: 19:39 Still hurts, does it.

Dan: 19:40 Still hurt.

Mel: 19:41 If you guys have enjoyed this episode and we really hope you have, please feel free to give us a review by iTunes or Stitcher.

Dan: 19:48 Yeah. Ratings are good too. And also you should totally subscribe.

Mel: 19:52 Yeah, 'cause that way you can listen next time.

Dan: 19:54 Exactly. And the next episode, we'll just start in three, two, one.

Mel: 19:57 Two, one.

#9 Licensing Effect: Why we order Diet Coke with our large Big Mac meals

Ever gone shopping for someone else and decided you deserved a gift too? In this episode, Mel and Dan explore the dark side of altruism, and how the decisions we make are often guided by a desire to balance out our emotional states.

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Dan: 00:16 Hey, welcome to Bad Decisions. The show that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel: 00:20 Why we think what we think.

Dan: 00:21 And how to exploit this stuff for fun and commercial gain.

Mel: 00:24 I'm Dr. Mel Weinberg. I'm a performance psychologist.

Dan: 00:26 And I'm Dan Monheit, co-founder of Hardhat, a creative agency built for today.

Mel: 00:30 Kops, can you please play the best theme music ever?

Dan: 00:34 We do get a lot of feedback on how good the theme music is.

Mel: 00:43 Hit it.

So, okay, I'm taking it back for this one to a couple of weeks ago. It was a conversation that you and I had out of the studio. It happened after I submitted a report that I'd been working on for quite a while. To be fair, I was pretty proud of myself. It was a big report. I thought I did a good job.

Dan: 00:59 Just like a uni assignment. Are you still doing uni assignments?

Mel: 01:03 No, not anymore. I did do them for a long time, so it's a fair question. But it was actually a report that I was paid to do as a consultant. Paid to prepare and submit. Anyway, I felt so good about myself that I thought that I really deserved to go out and spend $400 ... Not a barbecue this time.

Dan: 01:21 No barbecue. You already had the barbecue.

Mel: 01:21 This time it was cycling gear.

Dan: 01:25 Oh, good. Wait. Do you cycle?

Mel: 01:27 I do.

Dan: 01:27 Oh, that's not quite as bad as it could have been.

Mel: 01:30 So, yeah. I just felt like I really deserved it, so I went out and I spent $400,  and then I felt better.

Dan: 01:34 Yeah. Well, I mean, that makes sense. You did some work and then you bought some lycra.

Mel: 01:37 Right. Everyone does that.

Dan: 01:40 Everyone does that. The people that I know who do this ... This reminds me. Back in the day ... Even pre Hardhat, pre Nike Life, I spent four years working at Maccas, which I actually loved, by the way. One of the things that always used to trip me out a bit was when I would work on drive thru. The proportion of people that would come through ordering Big Mac meals or quarter pounder meals, these massive, calorie-laden meals with a diet Coke.

Mel: 02:06 Because that makes it healthier.

Dan: 02:07 Makes it healthy. You all can't just be enjoying the taste of watered down diet Coke more than regular Coke. There must be something else at play here.

Mel: 02:17 I actually do prefer diet Coke, but that's a side issue.

Dan: 02:19 Right. You and everybody else.

Mel: 02:21 What we're talking about here is this idea of licensing. This idea that we give ourselves the licence to do something indulgent or immoral following a good act.

Dan: 02:32 Just for those playing at home. Wait. Is licensing our heuristic for the day?

Mel: 02:35 Welcome, licensing.

From a psychological perspective, we are inherently motivated to alleviate negative emotions. There's a theory called the Negative State Relief Theory, which basically says exactly that. That when we feel negative for any reason, we're motivated to reduce that state. Motivated to relieve that negative state by doing something that will return us back or balance us out to a more positive emotional state.

Dan: 03:09 That's a much better way to go about your day. Feeling neutral or positive instead of negative.

Mel: 03:14 I mean, you'd think so.

Dan: 03:15 You would think so. As a marketing guy and also just as an observer of human behaviour, it would appear that of all of the heuristics that we have covered and will cover, that licensing is the single greatest contributor to what will inevitably be the downfall of mankind.

Mel: 03:30 Tell me more.

Dan: 03:32 Any situation we find ourselves in where we tell ourselves that we deserve to do something, because I've done A, I deserve to get B, it's usually ending badly. One of my favourite examples of this is some studies that have been done about wanting to lose weight. It turns out that one of the worst things you can do if you want to lose weight is to start exercising. Right. Because we start exercising ...

Mel: 03:55 I feel like there are a lot of people who are gonna come at us for this. Carry on.

Dan: 03:59 Well, this is what can happen. Right? Is you're like, "I wanna lose weight. First thing I need to do is I need to start exercising." We go and exercise and we feel really good about it.

Mel: 04:04 Wait. Let's just destroy the whole fitness industry.

Dan: 04:06 Yeah. But, well, it's actually what keeps the whole fitness industry going. Because you go out, you do your workout, you smash out your F45. Whatever it is you've just done. Then you feel so good about doing that, “that I deserve a hamburger for lunch.” What often happens is that I don't just get the hamburger. If I'm gonna do it, I gotta do it properly, so I'll get all of the indulgent toppings in there and I'll get the fries. You can't fries without the aioli. This is the whole package deal. Get the diet Coke, of course. But because of our optimistic inclinations, it would seem that we overestimate the calories we're burning from doing the exercise and underestimate the calories in the meals that we treat ourselves with to return back to neutral after exercising. We basically just undo the whole thing.

Mel: 04:47 That's a really good observation, perhaps unsurprisingly. There's some research to back this up.

Dan: 04:53 Research. Cue the research music.

Mel: 04:54 This is actually real research. Like all good research, it actually sums up what people pretty much already know, which is the licensing effect. An example is with people who take multivitamins. The study showed that people who take multivitamins give themselves a perception of being healthy and being a good human being. They are then more likely to engage in behaviours that are not ideal in terms of their wellbeing. If you take multivitamins, you're more likely to smoke, you're more likely to eat more unhealthy foods, and to do less exercise. But it's okay because you're taking a multivitamin once a day.

Dan: 05:37 Yeah. I mean, what impact can heroine really have on you if you've had a multivitamin before breakfast?

Mel: 05:42 Speaking of heroine and other undesirable things. There's another study that was a 2008 study that basically gave people a opportunity to voice their endorsement for Barack Obama in the presidential campaign. What they found was that people who were able to endorse him as a candidate, then acted more prejudice in a subsequent experiment. They were basically saying, "I support Barack Obama and that gives me the right to go and be racist."

Dan: 06:17 Yeah. This is a classic. "I'm not racist, but..."

Mel: 06:19 All the time, we hear it.

Dan: 06:21 "Some of my best friends are black people, but I will say about them..." That thing has a name.

Mel: 06:27 Now that we've covered racism and heroine in this podcast, where can we go next?

Dan: 06:32 Well, I think the only logical place to go to that is home electronics and home appliances.

Mel: 06:37 Okay.

Dan: 06:37 Yeah.

Mel: 06:38 That sounds completely logical.

Dan: 06:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a similar, funny like, "Oh, wow. Aren't humans idiots?" type research shows that people who have gone and bought energy efficient washing machines tend to wash 6% more often than people that haven't bought those machines, more than offsetting the benefits that they're getting. Same thing that happens with people that buy energy efficient lights. They tend to leave the lights on because they have the licence to leave the lights on because they're done the right thing by buying energy efficient lights. They leave them on more than people that don't have energy efficient lights, more than offsetting the benefit that they're getting. I guess there's even talk about how things like buying a Toyota Prius makes you feel good because you're not buying petrol as often. Even though the net environment impact of a Prius, because it takes a billion years for the battery and all the other components to disintegrate ...

Mel: 07:27 Licensing justifies every virtuous ... Or basically makes every virtuous activity that we do completely negated.

Dan: 07:35 Yeah. As it turns out, as soon as we try and do something good, we're gonna end up just offsetting it. We exercise, we go and eat a burger. We support Barack Obama, then we go and make racist remarks. We buy energy efficient lights and then we leave them on all day.

Mel: 07:48 The interesting thing about the licensing effect, or one of the interesting things because there are many, is that you don't even have to engage in one of those behaviours in order to justify the other. Thinking is powerful enough to elicit the licensing effect. Okay. Now, here, we're going real psychological and real in your head.

Dan: 08:03 In the brains.

Mel: 08:04 But what we know is that licensing effects happen even when people think about past positive behaviours. Just thinking about a past positive behaviour actually gives you the licence to then engage in something, perhaps, that's more indulgent or rewarding. There's an example from another research study where what they did was they split people into two groups and they gave people a list of words. Okay. Some people were given morally positive words like kind, compassionate, generous. Other people were given negatively moral words. Morally negative words, I should say. Things like selfish, unkind, mean, et cetera. The two groups were then asked to write a short story about themselves using the words that they were given.

Dan: 08:51 So, given nine horrible words, please use them to write a story about yourself.

Mel: 08:51 Basically what happened was that the people who had the positive words ... People who wrote, "I'm a kind, compassionate, generous, loving, giving person" ... At the end of the experiment, when they were paid for their time, they were told actually, "Here's $20 for your time. Would you like to donate $10 of it to a charity or keep it all for yourself?" The people who wrote the positive stories about themselves were less likely to donate the money and more likely to keep it for themselves. They hadn't even done anything except the study had elicited this sense of "I'm a good person, which then gives me the right - hang on, I’m taking my money."

Dan: 09:27 Yeah. Taking my money. I'm already kind and generous. I just wrote a story about it.

Mel: 09:31 The thing is that the other people who actually wrote the negative stories about themselves actually became more motivated to obviously give the money, which was the manipulating factor in that experiment. But it was this idea of moral cleansing, which is the idea that if we've just written something or just thought or just engaged in an activity that makes us feel morally bad, we then, through the Negative State Relief Theory, are motivated to actually do something more prosocial and more virtuous in order to recover that balanced state of emotions.

Dan: 10:04 Right. Now, I promised in the setup for this that I would not talk about religion at all. But I'm just gonna say, hypothetically, if you were to organise some sort of an organisation that would maybe be religious or maybe not, and part of what you wanted to do was raise money as part of that organisation, wouldn't it be a wonderful idea to put a whole bunch of people in a room on a regular, let's say, weekly basis and remind them of what horribly, morally corrupt people they are just before handing out a way for those people to make donations? Hypothetically.

The other thing that this makes me think of is there's a lot of stuff about daily mantras, and positive psychology, and all those sorts of things at the moment. Just off the back of that study you've just described, telling people to wake up every morning, and stand in the mirror, and look at themselves and say, "You are amazing. You are strong. You are brilliant. You are awesome" is probably setting them up to be complete assholes for the rest of the day. Maybe what we should tell people to do is wake up, and look in the mirror, and say, "You are a pathetic, morally bankrupt individual. Go and fix it today."

Mel: 11:02 I actually stand in front of the mirror in the morning and say, "You're an awful person. You are terrible."

Dan: 11:06 Yeah. That's why you're always so lovely when I see you.

Mel: 11:06 See? You see?

Dan: 11:10 Can you lend me $20? I need to buy some cycling kit.

Mel: 11:13 I also think I need to boost up my self esteem, but that's another episode.

Dan: 11:16 Not too much though. It'll just turn you into an asshole.

Mel: 11:19 Well, it is an interesting thing because we do live in this society where people are doing these sorts of things all the time. People are being ... All this stuff to push people to be more kind, and more generous, and more grateful, and more wonderful as a human being is actually setting them up to do some potentially really immoral things afterwards.

Dan: 11:35 Yeah. If you want to do the right thing for society, go out and tell somebody they're a selfish asshole, knowing that the licensing effect will make them want to prove you wrong.

Mel: 11:42 And that's the message of this episode.

Dan: 11:43 Is it?

Mel: 11:44 Everyone's an asshole.

Dan: 11:45 Yeah. So, hey. If we switch gears a little bit into where we see this play out commercially and we think about selling objectively indulgent product, it's hard to go past things like luxury cars. If you imagine ... I don't know why my mind always goes to print ads for luxury cars or billboards and you think about seeing ads in the financial review or the financial sections of other newspapers. When you see ads for luxury cars, there's almost always a theme or a feeling about them that it's like, "Isn't it time?" Or, "You deserve this." Or, "It's time to stop dreaming." Basically inferring that you have been working your ass off in a job that you probably don't like to pay for a house, and school fees, and everything else. And you deserve it. You deserve to drive this incredible, but obscenely overpriced European sports car.

Mel: 12:36 This got me thinking. I want to take us back if I can to our earlier example because I'm still trying to justify the fact that I spent $400 on cycling gear a couple of weeks ago. But what was interesting about that was that ... So, I was feeling really proud of myself. I was feeling this really strong sense of achievement. Totally setting myself up for a licensing effect. And so I went a bought a little bit of lycra and I spent $200.

Dan: 12:58 Who doesn't feel better buying a bit of lycra? That's not weird.

Mel: 13:02 Anyway. That's another story, and a very visual one at that. But I spent $200. And yet, I still felt that I needed to spend more. I felt that the $200 wasn't enough to offset how much I actually put into that report.

Dan: 13:15 Must have been a big report.

Mel: 13:16 I went a spent another $200. And only then, did I actually feel like I'd come out neutral. It made me think about how we go about neutralising our negative emotions. Remember in an earlier episode, we talked about loss aversion. We talked about how when people lose $10, it actually takes a gain of $20 to come out emotionally neutral. It made me think about that. I was wondering about the cost of offsetting different emotions. How much do you have to pay out to overcome feeling guilty?

Dan: 13:49 Yeah. If you got paid $200 to do this report, then $400 was absolutely the right amount to spend on Lycra to feel good about it.

Mel: 13:55 Well, apparently, according to that model ... I went about looking for some research to see if anybody ... Because there's a whole range of negative emotions, so there's a whole range of states that we would seek to balance out. I wondered if anybody had actually tried to quantify it or if it was indeed possible. Guess what I found.

Dan: 14:10 What did you find?

Mel: 14:10 Researchers following the Bad Decisions podcast. I found that there wasn't any.

Dan: 14:14 None.

Mel: 14:15 I'm doing a shout out. I'm doing a call out to anybody that wants to collaborate on some potentially unethical research. It wouldn't be unethical. Maybe that's why there's not much because inducing negative emotions into people is not something that is often looked upon as ... It's perhaps not the done thing. Nevertheless, if anybody's interested in inducing different emotions into people and finding out how much they're willing to pay to offset it, count me in.

Dan: 14:38 Yeah. You basically want to find out how much you have to pay to make a bad feeling go away.

Mel: 14:42 Yeah. That's a cool research question, right?

Dan: 14:45 Yeah.

Mel: 14:46 You love research.

Dan: 14:46 Yeah.

Mel: 14:46 You're in.

Dan: 14:48 Yeah.

Mel: 14:48 I have one co-researcher.

Dan: 14:50 Yeah. I definitely have the qualifications necessary for this. All right. So, hey. What do we do about this as marketers? We talked a little bit about luxury cars, but I think it's the same thing for any indulgent product. If you're selling any luxury goods or holidays, it would be really good advertise or promote those things in environments where people are probably feeling like they deserve it. Advertising for holidays in those horrible digital screens in lifts in big office buildings would make sense. In Gmail. You can run ads in Gmail as well. So, maybe, during the working day would be a good time to put ads in Gmail telling people that they probably should think about planning their next holiday.

Mel: 15:31 What we're saying here is that if you want to encourage people to make an indulgent decision, you wanna associate that with something where they feel like they've worked hard, and they've achieved something really good, and they've got a sense of pride about it.

Dan: 15:42 They deserve it.

Mel: 15:43 They really do deserve it.

Dan: 15:43 I deserve it.

Mel: 15:44 They deserve it. They deserve it. What about if you want to encourage people to make a virtuous decision or a prosocial decision, like a charitable donation? Besides the house of worship explanation earlier.

Dan: 15:56 Yes. This is a great question. It's funny because we were thinking about this in the setup for today and saying, "Oh, well, maybe when people are doing things like Christmas shopping and they're being really indulgent because they're spending all of this money. Maybe that would be a good time to ask them for some donations." But as we dug into that a bit further, we thought, well, people actually are probably more likely to think they're doing something virtuous when they're doing Christmas shopping because they're buying all this stuff for other people. It's probably actually a really bad time to asking them to make charitable donations and a good time to tell them to buy something for themselves.

Mel: 16:25 Which, actually, people often do end up doing.

Dan: 16:27 Yeah. It's like, "I went to do all of my Christmas or festive season shopping and I came home with some junk for everybody else. And a new pair of jeans for myself! I deserved that, I'd been shopping for others." But where we do see this work is if we think about places where people are undeniably having indulgent experiences. That might be in checking out of a great hotel or finishing up a meal at a great restaurant. Often times, you'll find on the bill that comes to you in the hotel or in the restaurant, that they've included or suggested a $5 donation or a roundup donation to the charity of somebody's choice. Because we're sitting there saying, "God, I've just spent $180 on a meal, yeah, $10 would probably be sufficient to make me not feel so indulgent about that." That's a great place for those sorts of messages.

Mel: 17:10 Basically leveraging people's emotional states in order to convince them to make a decision or encourage them to make a decision that is in our favour. Another example like that, is if you think about what happens when you're on flights and you might be coming home from a lovely holiday, and they're coming around with the tin and saying, "Put all your spare coins, anything that you've got leftover in this bag or in this tin." Basically, you've just had a wonderful, indulgent experience. You're feeling pretty good about yourself right now. Here's something that you can do to actually offset that. Help somebody else.

Dan: 17:41 Yeah. Go and spend 25 grand on a holiday and then put $1.60 in a little container and you're gonna be morally neutral. Sound good? All right. That's licensing in a nutshell. As brands, what we need to do is we need to think about, if we're indulgent, where can we find people that can be told that they deserve to indulge? And if we're pious and righteous, we gotta find places where people feel undeniably that they have just been indulging and need to offset that. My question, though, is as consumers, as mere humans, is it all useless? Is there any point in even trying to go and do rightful, socially positive things knowing that we're just gonna go and leave the lights on for longer anyway?

Mel: 18:21 From a psychological human perspective, if I go back to my story where I spent $400 in an attempt to neutralise my state of feeling pride and achievement. A better thing I could have done to actually neutralise my emotions would actually have been to go for a run or actually do some exercise rather than buying the gear to do the exercise. There are cheaper ways to neutralise emotions than going out and spending money on things. If I'm a responsible and rational consumer, what I'm actually doing is finding different ways to manage my emotions and regulate my emotions, and still have $400 in my bank account at the end of the day.

Dan: 19:00 Right. What we're saying is next time you feel like you deserve it, what you really want is some endorphins and you can get them by spending money, but you could also get them by doing some exercise.

Mel: 19:08 You want adrenaline. You want dopamine. There are better ways to get it, and cheaper ways than the ones we've described here.

Dan: 19:13 Yeah. You go and run on the freeway. You'll get both.

Mel: 19:15 Careful.

Dan: 19:16 Good. Okay. That is not a suggestion or recommendation from us. It's just an idea of how you could spike your own adrenaline levels.

Mel: 19:21 I think it's a good ending point. But I think that ... Just a reminder that if you want to ... If you have any feedback for us, if you have any questions, if you want to join us in any research expeditions, please find us on social media. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. #BadDecisions. Also find me @DrMelW.

Dan: 19:39 Awesome. And I'm @DrDanMonheit on all the usual social networks.

Mel: 19:44 Wait. Hold up a second. Did you just give yourself an honorary doctorate title? @DrDanMonheit?

Dan: 19:48 Did I just do that? We're gonna have to go back. Can we go back to tapes, Kops?

“Awesome. And I'm @DrDanMonheit on all the usual social networks.”

Mel: 20:01 Yup. That happened. You know that happened.

Dan: 20:03 Okay. Well, you can get me at that or you can get me at any of my actual handles, which is just @DanMonheit. I'm gonna have to speak to some universities just to see if I can get that honorary doctorate.

Mel: 20:14 I'll see if I can help you out.

Dan: 20:14 Organise. We should also give a special shout out to Kops, the main man who that is on the wheels of steel, producing all of the shows. And we literally couldn't do this without you, Kops. We'd just be two people sitting in a room talking.

Mel: 20:26 Love you.

Dan: 20:27 Love you.

Mel: 20:51 All right. Off to Maccas.

Dan: 20:42 Yep.

#8 Temporal Discounting: Why we want $10 today, not $15 tomorrow

Despite our best intentions, selecting options that provide sensible, long term benefits over impulsive, short term ones, seems pretty much impossible. In this episode, Mel and Dan explore how our desire for instant gratification can be used to market products for today, as well as products for tomorrow.

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Mel: 00:19 Hi, and welcome to Bad Decisions.

Dan: 00:21 The show that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel: 00:24 Why we think what we think.

Dan: 00:25 And how to exploit this stuff for fun and commercial gain.

Mel: 00:28 I'm Dr. Mel Weinberg, I'm a performance psychologist.

Dan: 00:31 And I'm Dan Monheit, co-founder of Hardhat, a creative agency built for today. Hit it Kops.

So I'm sitting on the couch last night. Feeling pretty good about myself, I'd actually just had a salad and some chicken for dinner.

Mel: 00:47 Good for you.

Dan: 00:47 Thank you. And just kind of gnawing at me, in the back of my mind, was this memory, that in my freezer, there was ... I want to say a quarter, but it was probably more like a third, and by third, I probably mean a half a tub of Ben & Jerry's, the Tonight Dough, ice cream.

So you know phrase ... I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Tonight Dough?

Mel: 01:07 Oh I'm familiar.

Dan: 01:08 You're familiar? It's got basically everything you could ever want in an ice cream.

Mel: 01:11 You don't need to teach me about ice cream.

Dan: 01:13 It's like peanut butter and-

Mel: 01:13 I've got it.

Dan: 01:14 Yeah, okay, cool. I knew I wanted it. I knew it was going to be delicious and I was really going to enjoy it if I just went and got it and started hoeing into it with a spoon. I try use a teaspoon, I feel better about myself, it's true.

But, so I'm sitting there thinking “today, or shall I say, tonight Dan, really, really wants to smash this ice cream. And I know tomorrow Dan is not going to be happy about it, but, fuck tomorrow Dan, he'll work it out when tomorrow gets here.”

And as this was playing out in my mind, I realised this is actually a thing I seem to do to myself often. Help me Dr Mel, help me.

Mel: 01:48 Well Dan, what I can tell you, is that you are falling victim to another heuristic.

Dan: 01:53 Another heuristic, and we happen to be recording. What were the chances!

Mel: 01:56 Who would have thought. So what we're talking about here is temporal discounting.

Dan: 02:01 Temporal discounting.

Mel: 02:02 Temporal discounting. Which is the idea that we tend to discount the value of things that are further away in time, and over value things that we can have here and now. So your behaviour is reminding me of a famous experiment that is done with little children.

Dan: 02:17 This is shaping up great.

Mel: 02:19 And you've probably seen it. And many of you might have heard of it. It's the marshmallow experiment.

Dan: 02:19 Yes.

Mel: 02:23 You know the marshmallow experiment?

Dan: 02:24 I know the marshmallow experiment.

Mel: 02:25 So what happens is, you've got a little kid, usually sort of, anywhere between four and seven years old, sitting there at a table. And the researcher comes in and the researcher offers them a marshmallow. They place the marshmallow down on the plate in front of them, and they say “hey little kid, you can have the marshmallow now if you want. But, if you wait 15 minutes, I'll come back into the room, and if the marshmallow is still there, I'll give you another one, and you can eat them both.”

Dan: 02:51 I understand what they're trying to do here. But, surely this flies in the face of not accepting candy from strangers?

Mel: 02:57 Yeah, you've got a point, but, nevertheless, what we find, is that ... and what's really interesting to me about this, is that when you actually watch it, you can see the pain and the anguish on the little kid's face, as they struggle to make this decision between satisfying their emotional need right now - which is “oh my God, there's a marshmallow sitting in front of me and, God I love marshmallows and I really want to eat it.”

Or, knowing that “if I just wait, I can get two.” And you really just see it play out on these kids faces. And I'm sure it was playing out on your face last night..

Dan: 03:29 Yeah, I mean these kids are picking up the marshmallows and just like, “maybe if I just caress it a little bit, maybe if I just kind of smell it, if I smell the marshmallow” ... And I guess, as we grow into adults, some of us grow into adults, we learn to be a bit less expressive about it. But like what you've just described about the anguish on these kids faces, is exactly what I felt on the couch last night.

That I was kind of ... I was at this juncture. I could see both paths playing out ahead of me, and objectively, I knew which the right path was, and what did I say to the objectively right path? Fuck you, I'll sort it out tomorrow.

Mel: 04:00 So, the thing for me about temporal discounting, which makes it really interesting as a heuristic, compared to the others is that, when we've talked about most of the other heuristics, we emphasise this element of uncertainty and being drawn towards making the emotional decision at the moment. And then afterwards, we can think of what the more rational decision is.

With temporal discounting, we actually have two options in front of us. We have the clear emotional choice, and we have the more rational choice. And we have the opportunity to really have some certainly about what the rational choice is, and yet, we still fall victim to making the emotional, bad decision.

Dan: 04:34 Yeah, I mean this is one of those ones, where you are literally watching the car crash happen in real time. So you're standing there, you've got the dessert menu in front of you at a restaurant, or the sneakers in front of you at the store. And you literally can feel the little devil and the little angel on your shoulders telling you what to do. And you have this internal dialogue about, I know what's right, I know what I want to do, I know what I should do. And, for some reason, over and over again, we seem to pick the right short term thing, knowing it is probably the wrong medium to long term thing.

Mel: 05:05 So one of the reasons that we do this, and one of the theories that underlies is from a psychological perspective, is the idea of unrealistic optimism. And a lot of people have probably heard of this as well. Which is that, if we actually are a mentally healthy person, we have this sense where everything is going to be okay in the future.

In fact, we think more so that good things are more likely to happen to us, than bad. And, we just tend to think that everything's going to be okay. It's what drives our behaviour now, thinking that everything will be okay in the future.

And so, you're sitting there with your tub of ice cream thinking, “future Dan will be just fine, he's not going to be this 150 kilo mammoth.”

Dan: 05:42 No, no, he's gonna work this out. He's going to exercise like nobody's business.

Mel: 05:47 Because future Dan is awesome, right? He's ... and unrealistically, so.

Dan: 05:52 Excuse me. Future Dan's six pack is currently carving itself as we speak. And future Dan's superannuation fund is also stacking up to the sky.

Mel: 06:01 So it's very easy to imagine good circumstances happening to future Dan. So much so, that we figure, future Dan's going to be fine. Discount future Dan, because he's just going to be alright. And let's focus on what we can have here and now.

Dan: 06:13 Yep. I guess that that makes sense. Like that's one pretty good reason why we would prioritise the here and now over the future. I guess, the other reason that feels like it would make sense, is because, historically, having a future to worry about, is a pretty new thing. For a long part of our existence, life expectancy was around about 25.

Mel: 06:33 Going back a long way, but yeah.

Dan: 06:35 Going back a long way, but you know, in the context of the universe. Evolution is a slow process. It makes sense that we would have evolved to prioritise the here and now, because in the future, either everything going to be sweet, or we're going to be dead anyway, so what's the point.

Mel: 06:47 Sure, you could get attacked by a bear at anytime.

Dan: 06:48 It's true. Dead with a six pack, dead with a keg. Doesn't make a difference, dead anyway.

Mel: 06:53 So what we find though, and going back to the marshmallow experiment, now what actually happened when they followed these kids up over time, was that it turns out, that the kids who are able to delay the gratification, and actually hold out and wait until they could receive the two marshmallows, turned out to do better than other kids on a whole bunch of different outcomes that are good for us.

So in terms of health outcomes, in terms of wealth outcomes, in terms of everything that we think is good for us, the ability to delay gratification and resist the impulse to eat the marshmallow now, played out much further down the track.

Dan: 07:26 So I guess what that means for us is, just humans trying to get by in the world, is if we can train ourselves to get better at foregoing instant gratification, in the hope of some future, bigger, better gratification, that's going to work out pretty well? Is that a fair thing to say?

Mel: 07:42 I think that's the idea.

Dan: 07:43 And I think, ooh, I feel a parenting tip coming on. Kops, do we have any parenting tip music?

Okay, that'll do. As parents, we decide what we teach our kids to value, and so, you know, looking at what happened with these kids in the marshmallow experiment, obviously we want our kids to be two marshmallow kids, not one marshmallow kid. Eve though they're doubling their calorific intake. But that's a whole separate issue.

But, as parents teaching our kids what to value, it seems to me that it would make sense to teach kids to value things in the future, and to value delaying gratification now for things in the future, rather than to value getting whatever you want, right here, right now.

End parenting tip.

Mel: 08:25 So, now that we have a pretty good understanding of what temporal discounting is, and how it works. Let's turn it into the practical side of things.

Dan: 08:34 All right, awesome. So my time to shine, right?

Mel: 08:36 If you say so.

Dan: 08:38 Currently shining.

So, there's some really interesting implications in this for marketers. So the first and the easiest one to look at is, if you happen to look after a product, or a service that has short term benefits for people. Like is a short term or impulsive type product, then, absolutely lean into that. Knowing that we are hardwired to prioritise benefits right here, right now, over things in the future.

Mel: 09:05 Right, I was going to say like if we have an emotional need, that needs to be satisfied right now-

Dan: 09:09 Yeah.

Mel: 09:09 And you've got a product that can service that need. Go all out.

Dan: 09:13 Exactly. So if you've got a snack food designed for people who are hungry. You know if I think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So somebody trying to fil a bottom order need, get some food in their stomach. Trying to talk to them about how the chocolate bar is going to help you self-actualize, it's going to be a tough battle, right?

Instead, you should focus on some things that treats the here and now. And when you look at confectionary, you know chocolate bars that have succeeded globally for long periods of time, like this is exactly what they do.

Snickers is my favourite example. It's also one of my favourite chocolate bars, but ... snickers really satisfies. It's not talking to you about world peace, it's not talking to you about sustainable farming, it's not talking to you about saving for retirement. It's like, “you are hungry now, put this in your face, you will feel better.”

Mel: 09:56 So the contrast to this. And I think ... it makes me think about industries where this is particularly relevant. Where the concept of time is really important to them. So things like insurance companies, superannuation companies - industries where everything, the product is all about the future. And the future is uncertain.

Understanding how temporal discounting works for the consumer is really important, because you're trying to sell people on sometimes that really is not of any instant need to them right now.

Dan: 10:22 Yeah. I mean this is really tough. And a lot of the big industries that all of us work in, are in exactly this space. And even within those industries, I think there's two categories. So you've got guys like banks and universities, who often are selling something long term, but it's a positive. So it's like, well, you're going to pay off your house for 30 years, but then you're going to own it. Or, you're going to come and study for four years, and then you're going to have this degree and this wonderful career ahead of you.

But then you've also got guys like insurance companies, who are not only selling long terms things, but they're selling long term, negative, uncertain things. Like here's a product for you. Like don't spend 120 dollars going out this month. Spend 120 dollars protecting you in the future, in case something really bad happens, and you're going to need to go to the hospital, or something like that.

Mel: 11:06 And unrealistic optimism tell us that the chances of that happening to us, are so slim anyway.

Dan: 11:10 Ah no, I don't go to hospitals. That's for other people.

Mel: 11:13 Never. Other people go to hospitals. It will never happen to me. It's also worth noting that we're actually so bad at falling victim to temporal discounting, that we actually have to be protected from it, by way of forced superannuation. So we're so bad at putting money aside for our future, that the government has actually forced us to do it.

Dan: 11:30 Yeah. So, we've seen some degree of that happen with health insurance as well, where the government basically penalises you for not taking out health insurance. But even then, if you're in education or even if you are in health insurance, there are some things that you can do, to help overcome temporal discounting.

So, I mean, one of the things is to take a very, very hazy future state. You know if you're a bank, thinking about the home that somebody might own one day if they save enough. Or the holiday they might get to take. And make it less hazy. Make it more concrete. Give people something firm that they can actually hook themselves onto. Because there's been some interesting studies that suggest that, if were trying to delay gratification for a known thing, we're much better at doing that, than delaying gratification for an unknown thing.

Mel: 12:13 Yeah. So a good example is if you think about planning for a holiday. And you think that people are actually willing to spend money on a holiday that might happen in the future. The outcome is fairly certain, right? Our future holiday is going to be something that we can be pretty certain that we're going to enjoy as well.

And what you find is that people are willing to do that, because they know that not only do they get to enjoy the experience of purchasing a holiday, but they then get to enjoy the next three, four, five, six, twelve months of actually leading up. The anticipation of the holiday, is often better than the enjoyment of the actually holiday itself.

Dan: 12:48 Absolutely. I think another really cute example of this, is some research done ... I'm pretty sure it was Dan Ariely, one of my other giant man crushes. He's not giant. The crush is giant. But, he did a ... I think he did some research into if people had the opportunity to meet their celebrity crush, if they'd rather meet them this afternoon, or if they'd rather meet them in three days time. And most people would prefer to meet them in three days time because it's a fixed thing. You're going to get to meet them today or in three days time. But, if it's in three days time, you also get to enjoy the anticipation and the lead up and thinking about it for that period, which adds to an overall greater happiness experience.

Mel: 13:26 So, bottom line, anything that we can do to make something that is potentially uncertain in the future, seem closer in time, and more certain, is going to benefit.

Dan: 13:35 Yeah. And the other thing we can do as far as making things closer in time, is to try and find interim goals that people can get. So if your university's selling education, talking about the career you're going to have in 30 years, is great maybe. But talking about what you're going to know at the end of your first semester, or what transfer options, or further education options would be available to you at the end of your first year, would also be great.

Similarly, if you're a bank trying to chase down new customers, helping people understand, if they sign up today, what do they get tonight. What benefits do they unlock? What status or rewards or offers can they have today to help satiate that need to get to a future benefit that may or may not arrive.

You also see a lot of health insurance companies do this, by bundling in rewards programmes. Where, even if you never actually claim on your health insurance, you can get discounted sneakers, or entry into gyms and things like that, just for signing up.

All right Mel, super quick summary. What have we learnt today?

Mel: 14:32 Well we learnt that as a consumer, we're going to be highly vulnerable to making decisions that result in us receiving something right here, right now. But long term, may not be in our best interest.

Dan: 14:43 And is there anything we can do about that?

Mel: 14:45 Well there is ... we can, if we are aware of it, then we can potentially train ourselves to delay reward, and resist that impulse.

Dan: 14:54 Or we can rely on the government to put in policies that force us to focus on the future rather than the here and now.

Mel: 15:00 Cool.

Dan: 15:01 I guess if we’re selling stuff that is meant to fulfil short term needs, then go, pedal to the metal, hammer that wherever we can. If we're selling things that are more about long term planning, long term goals, we've got to find ways to make things less hazy. Make them clearer. And also find some short term interim goals or benefits that we can help people enjoy.

Is that everything?

Mel: 15:19 I think so.

Dan: 15:21 All right. Hey, this is good, it was good. I'm glad we got to talk about temporal discounting.

Mel: 15:25 Yeah, I mean, it's about time.

Dan: 15:30 Oh wow, that's bad.

Mel: 15:32 Yeah, I did.

Dan: 15:33 Was that a doctor joke? Was that psyche joke?

Mel: 15:36 All right, if you guys have any questions for us, please find us on social media.

Dan: 15:40 Not just questions, what about feedback? Can we have feedback?

Mel: 15:42 Feedback's great. Yeah we love feedback.

Dan: 15:42 We love getting feedback.

Mel: 15:43 Only if it's good though.

Dan: 15:44 If it's good send it to me. And hey, keep listening. We have so many more bad decisions to unpack, so make sure you come and check out the next episode. It's going to drop two weeks from now. See ya!

Dan: 16:13 I think doctor jokes are worse than dad jokes.

Mel: 16:16 I think we're finished here.

#7 Anchoring: Why we spend too much on BBQs

When we’re trying to determine the value of something, we tend to place far too much reliance on the first piece of information we stumble across. In this episode, Mel and Dan look at ways that pricing strategies influence our judgement, and how game shows make us feel like losers when we’re actually winning.

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Dan: 00:18 Hey and welcome to Bad Decisions. The podcast that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel: 00:22 Why we think what we think.

Dan: 00:23 And how to exploit this stuff for fun and commercial gain.

We're your hosts. I'm Dan Monheit co-founder of Hardhat, a creative agency built for the digital age.

Mel: 00:31 And I'm Dr Mel Weinberg a performance psychologist. And cue music.

Dan: 00:41 Hey Mel, you're a psychologist right?

Mel: 00:46 I think so.

Dan: 00:46 Like a real one, yeah? You do consultations with people?

Mel: 00:49 Yeah.

Dan: 00:50 Okay, cool.

Mel: 00:54 Do you think that I don't? You want to check my registration?

Dan: 00:56 Okay, that's good. Can we do one of them now?

Mel: 00:57 Okay.

Dan: 00:58 I'm gonna tell you I'm mad, why I'm raging. I mainly hate TV, I mainly don't watch TV but, sometimes things happen and the TV is on and it just happens to catch my attention. Of all the types of TV I hate it's reality TV and game show TV that drives me the most crazy and leaves me with the least amount of faith in mankind.

Mel: 01:18 Stop right there, this isn't gonna work.

Dan: 01:19 What do you mean, why?

Mel: 01:22 In order for the therapeutic relationship to work you and I need to have a good rapport, feel like we're on the same page. I cannot be on the same page with you about this.

Dan: 01:29 What, you watch reality TV?

Mel: 01:31 Love reality TV, what else is there to watch?

Dan: 01:33 Aren't you a freaking doctor? Isn't it just beneath you?

Mel: 01:37 No, I typically think that when I spend all of my day using my brain when I come home I want to watch something that doesn't involve using my brain at all.

Dan: 01:46 So because I don't use my brain during the ... Are you suggesting?

Mel: 01:48 Just saying.

Dan: 01:50 Anyway, just go with me on this. So anyway I'm watching Deal or No Deal, this whole show could really be done in fifteen seconds. I don't know how they manage to drag this shit out for a full half hour. But what I just do not understand about this show, what was driving me absolutely crazy is you have these, basically losers. I mean, these guys are wearing polyester shirts. You have these guys who if you walked up to them before the show started and said " Hey buddy, how bout’ I just write you a check for ten thousand dollars right now, how would you feel about that? " They would take it, and these same idiots just because they're onstage and these weird metal briefcases and lights and music are saying no to guarantees of twenty grand, thirty grand, fifty grand. I just don't understand it. These people are idiots.

Mel: 02:40 So it sounds to me Dan that the reason that you dislike these sorts of game shows is actually the reason that I really do like them. Which is that they are all actually based on behavioural economics stuff. It's what we do! They make it fun! They gamify it.

Dan: 02:52 I'm not buying into this at all.

Mel: 02:52 You love it now. Basically what happens on Deal or No Deal, at least in the Australian version, which I assume is what you're watching. So you've got the chance to win two-hundred thousand dollars right? And that's what comes up in big flashing lights, two-hundred thousand dollars your only chance to win and like what you said the show is designed and situated in a way that introduces pressure, suspense, elements of risk, huge uncertainty right?

Dan: 03:18 Mild nausea for the audience.

Mel: 03:19 For some maybe, enjoyment for others. All that is in an attempt to push the contestant into making a decision that is emotional rather than rational. That's behavioural economics, that's what we do here. So all of a sudden for the guy you were talking about winning ten grand seems like you've lost. Because what they're doing is anchoring it against the grand prize of two-hundred thousand dollars. So when you compare it to the reference of two-hundred thousand dollars, ten grand seems like small change.

Dan: 03:50 Okay, you just said anchoring?

Mel: 03:53 Anchoring, anchoring is our heuristic of the episode. Welcome anchoring into the show.

Dan: 03:58 Alright, can we have some anchoring theme music Kops?

Dan: 04:14 That's much better Kops thank-you.

Mel: 04:16 Anchoring is the tendency for us to place disproportionate value on the first piece of information we are given when making a decision. Basically, whatever it is that we hear first, we use that as a reference point against which future information is considered. So anything that we hear after that doesn't get thought of independently of whatever comes before it. It's all based on whatever we've heard so far.

Dan: 04:38 Okay, so in this Deal or No Deal thing, they don't tell you that you could win zero dollars. They come out and say you could win two-hundred thousand dollars.

Mel: 04:47 Exactly, because they don't want to anchor the ten thousand dollars against the zero dollars. They're anchoring the ten thousand relative to the two hundred grand. So all of a sudden if you're getting ten thousand dollars you don't think you're getting a very good deal at all.

Dan: 04:58 And you might be inclined to say, " No deal. "

See I'm with you now. I guess we don't really talk about anchoring but this does make me think of two other techniques that people speak about. One is the age old low-balling technique where if somebody's trying to sell you something the first thing you do is give them an offensively low price. If somebody comes up to you and tries to sell you their car, twenty thousand dollar car, " Well if you throw in the tyres I'll maybe give you ten grand for it. " And then you've basically anchored them at ten grand and anything is assessed as relative to that.

Or there's the opposite of that which I guess is what we're afraid of, which is the door in the face technique.

Mel: 05:37 What's that?

Dan: 05:38 So the door in the face technique probably comes from the time of door to door salespeople. And it's the idea that when you give the first price to somebody you make it so eye wateringly high that the person you're trying to sell to basically slams the door in your face and tells you to piss off, but you've now set an anchor that these steak knives are going to cost a hundred and eighty dollars and when you end up selling them for a hundred and twenty or whatever it is the person buying thinks they've actually got a really good deal.

Mel: 06:05 You know what I've just realised?

Dan: 06:07 What's that?

Mel: 06:07 Not only do we work in different industries but our industries actually have their own different languages. It's amazing that we communicate at the level that we do. I say anchoring you say door in the face and we're all talking about the same thing. Potato Potatoe.

It's also making me think of all the times that I've actually been ripped off as a consumer.

Dan: 06:07 Yeah and are there a few?

Mel: 06:26 Yeah, because sometimes I go into situations and I really have no idea how much things cost. And I feel like this might have happened to me recently with a purchase of a BBQ that I bought. Hot Dogs at Mel’s, but that's a different thing. I just wanted something simple.

Dan: 06:43 I think BBQs are a great category for looking at these types of things because a BBQ is a thing that most people only buy once every, what, like when was your last BBQ purchase?

Mel: 06:52 I'm 34, that was my first.

Dan: 06:54 First BBQ purchase, so once every 34 years. So you walk into it basically susceptible to every type of behavioural economics heuristic possible because you have no idea what you're doing.

Mel: 07:03 And I'm blonde.

Dan: 07:03 And you're blonde.

Mel: 07:05 Adds a whole other element.

Dan: 07:06 Does it?

Mel: 07:06 To the sales process, yeah.

Dan: 07:08 Maybe we'll get a BBQ sales person on next episode and see if there is any truth in that.

Okay, so you're gonna go buy a BBQ and what happened?

Mel: 07:15 I walk in and there's a whole bunch of BBQs there and what's the first one that I see? The biggest shiniest BBQ that's out on display.

Dan: 07:23 The Beef-Eater twelve thousand?

Mel: 07:25 Five thousand dollars.

Dan: 07:26 Five thousand dollars for a BBQ?

Mel: 07:28 Right? I'm not making BBQs for a whole family alright.

Dan: 07:33 You don't strike me as a five thousand dollar BBQ buyer.

Mel: 07:35 Do I look like the sort of person who would spend five thousand dollars on a BBQ?

Dan: 07:37 Nah, I'm gonna be real here. No you do not.

Mel: 07:39 I basically said, no thank you not interested. Did not want to spend that amount of money. See ya later, I'm out.

But I did buy a BBQ.

Dan: 07:48 You did buy a BBQ? So you didn't “see ya later I'm out. I'm out of this aisle and going into the next aisle where I will purchase a BBQ”, for how much?

Mel: 07:56 I feel like I slammed the door in the guys face, but I don't think it hit him.

Dan: 08:01 Okay, what did you end up buying?

Mel: 08:03 Well, since you asked. I paid six hundred and ninety-nine dollars.

What are you doing? But I got a trolley and a BBQ cover thrown in.

Dan: 08:13 What?! Oh you got a cover thrown in.  That's gotta be worth at least four bucks on Ebay!

You spent seven hundred dollars on a BBQ?

Mel: 08:21 Why do I feel like you're taking the piss?

Dan: 08:21 What's your cost per use going to be? How many steaks are you gonna cook on that Mel - Sorry Dr Mel?

Okay, let’s be real though. If I had told you at the start of the day that you were going to go and spend seven hundred dollars on a BBQ, but you would get a free trolley and cover with it, you reckon you would've been cool with that?

Mel: 08:38 You're making me feel silly.

Dan: 08:39 Not silly, but let me tell you something. Girl, you got anchored. You got anchored bad.

Mel: 08:46 This is why I need you!

Dan: 08:47 You got anchored bad.

Mel: 08:48 Oh god. What do I ... okay.

Dan: 08:51 But hey, it happened to the best of us. At least they didn't put the BBQ in a bag that you then carried around that told everybody that you got anchored badly.

Mel: 09:01 Wearing it on my forehead?

Dan: 09:02 Because apparently this happens in some markets overseas, like you go travelling in Asia. Particularly I heard about this happening in Thailand where you go to a market and you bargain hard in there. Sorry, this is a complete side note by the way. And you go and bargain for headphones or whatever it is you're buying, you eventually get to a price, you give them the money they put the thing you've brought, whatever it is, headphones, DVD, I dunno do people still buy DVDs? I dunno, into a bag.

But apparently, there's different bags that mean different things so if its in a black bag it means that you're a really hard negotiator. If they put it in a white bag it's like you're a really bad negotiator and if they put it in black and white stripy bag it might mean you're somewhere in the middle. So you're basically walking around the market with a sign telling every other vendor how they're meant to anchor you.

Mel: 09:48 They've got some secret language going on as well?

Dan: 09:50 It's not even that secret. You're literally like walking around with a flashing sign that says “can't negotiate for shit, start high.”

Mel: 09:55 “This persons an idiot, charge them as much as you want.”

Dan: 09:57 See so we're all susceptible, it happens. Anyway, that may or may not be true but if it is true it's a great story and if it's not it's still a great story it's just not true.

Another place where we see anchoring come to life is on wine menus. I feel like honestly we could do a whole episode on wine menus and restaurant menus. We could do a lot of restaurant examples. But, on wine menus normally, the highest volume selling wine on a wine menu is the second most expensive wine because customers will look at the list. They'll see the most expensive, they'll get anchored to that. They're like " I'm not crazy, I'm not Mel buying a five thousand dollar BBQ. I'm going to be a bit more reserved - "

Oh don't be sad.

" - and I'm going to buy the second most expensive wine. " And a lot of restaurants knowing this will therefore make their second most expensive wine on the menu the wine that they make the best margin on. Sneaky sneaky.

Mel: 10:46 So the thing about this and the interesting thing about anchoring is that the research has shown that the anchor value doesn't even have to have anything at all to do with the product.

So we talked at the start about Deal or No Deal and we were talking in terms of currency and we've talked with the BBQs as well. But, what the research shows - cue music -

Dan: 11:03 I think we're getting over produced. Has this show jumped the shark?

Mel: 11:13 The research shows that the anchor value doesn't even have to have anything to do with the product, so for example, Tversky and Kahneman. It's as if we've just read one paper by Tversky and Kahneman and we're just citing it. But this one does come from their popular piece in science from 1974.

Dan: 11:30 Oh I read that, cover to cover.

Mel: 11:32 Hasn't everyone?

And what they did was have participants watch a spin of a roulette wheel. And it was rigged to either stop at number ten or number sixty-five, so it wasn't like your standard roulette game zero to thirty-six or whatever it is.

Dan: 11:32 Yeah that's weird.

Mel: 11:45 You wouldn't want to be betting on it. Wheel's rigged so you're either going to land at number ten or number sixty-five and what they then did was ask people to guess the percentage of United Nation countries that were African countries.

Dan: 11:56 Who doesn't know that?

Mel: 11:57 I mean look, nobody has any idea.

What happened was, for people who saw the wheel -

Dan: 12:02 Sorry to our African listeners. I'm gonna take it upon myself to know the answer to this by next episode.

Mel: 12:08 For people who saw the wheel land on number ten, their estimates were about twenty-five percent on average. But, for people who saw the wheel land on sixty-five their guesses where about forty-five percent.

Dan: 12:21 This makes no sense at all.

Mel: 12:22 It's like we get primed to think in reference to the latest number that we heard.

Dan: 12:25 Even if the number has absolutely nothing to do with the question?

Mel: 12:28 That's what the research shows.

Dan: 12:29 It's like we're so stupid, we're so clueless, we're in a new situation and we literally have no idea what the answer is.

We're like "brain, what's the percentage of African countries in the United Nations?" And my brains like "uh I dunno." "The answer should be a number, are there any other numbers you can tell me?" And it just literally just grabs the closest number and says "there you go, try this." Like sixty-five, that sounds a bit much let’s go with forty-five.

Mel: 12:54 Anchoring in a nutshell.

Dan: 12:54 That's literally what happens.

Mel: 12:55 That's it.

Dan: 12:56 You know every episode we do I just realise how stupid we are as a species.

Mel: 13:01 We are but it's the whole point of what we are trying to do here is actually give people the information so that they can then use to then improve the way that they understand what's going on and the way that they make decisions.

Dan: 13:12 Yeah, and sell more stuff. Shall we get to that bit?

Mel: 13:15 Yeah.

Dan: 13:15 Okay, so I think there's a few really cool ways that we can use this. So the first one we could talk about is any negotiating situation and the conventional wisdom if you're going into a salary negotiation or whatever. Buying a house or whatever it is, there's always this idea that you want the other person to go first. Whoever says the number first, loses.

Mel: 13:37 But it's also nice, a nice thing to do sometimes to give the other person.

Dan: 13:40 But also awkward, you know it’s awkward. I think off the back of today's episode we can see there's gonna be an anchor set. Someone's gonna say something first and then all the other negotiations are going to take place as a result of that anchor.

Mel: 13:54 I think I get what you're going to.

Dan: 13:56 If someone’s going to set an anchor: I vote me.

Mel: 13:59 I get this now. Why I such a negotiating. It's because I'm too nice.

Dan: 14:03 Too nice, yeah. You've just got to come in and make an obscene demand. You've got to slam the door in someone’s face with your demand. Your rates for doing this podcast are going to go up significantly. What's four times zero?

Definitely for any negotiating situation go in hard, go in strong, you set the anchor and let everybody else work around you.

Mel: 14:26 It also helps in terms of getting a sense of control over the situation. Because like we've said somebody's gonna set an anchor, if you leave it up to the other person, you're playing their game from there. So negotiations from somebody who's not good at negotiations. I've learnt my lesson.

Dan: 14:41 Definitely take advice from Mel about negotiating.

Mel: 14:44 Set the anchor first, got it.

What else from a marketing perspective?

Dan: 14:47 Supermarkets do all sorts of wacky stuff with pricing and bundling and things like that and anchoring can play a really big role in how many of a product people will purchase.

There's been some really interesting studies that looked at advertising rolls of paper and when you look at things like four rolls of paper for two dollars or fifty cents a roll a significantly higher proportion of people will pick up the four rolls for two dollars even though you can buy them as individuals. Because, people have been anchored to think that four is the correct number of rolls of paper that you clearly need whoever you are and whatever house you happen to live in.

Mel: 15:22 Okay so I think I've seen some research similar to that and it involved a supermarket selling Campbell soup. They have cans of soup but they were on sale for seventy-nine cents.

Dan: 15:22 That's a good deal.

Mel: 15:32 Yeah, you'd think. What happens is they have shoppers go into the supermarket. They go through the soups, they see Campbells soup’s on sale for seventy-nine cents and people were purchasing an average of 3.3 cans of soup. Great.

Dan: 15:45 I've never bought a third of a can of soup.

Mel: 15:47 It's an average so take in average numbers.

Dan: 15:49 You do your fancy math stuff and come back to me.

Mel: 15:52 They were buying on average three or four cans of soup, you happy?

Then what they did was they put a sign up and the sign said there's a limit of twelve cans of soup per customer. All of a sudden what have they done? They've set an anchor.

Dan: 16:06 They're anchoring people at twelve. Yep.

Mel: 16:07 And what they found was that when that sign was up shoppers purchased an average of seven cans of soup.

Dan: 16:13 Seven, up from three and a third?

Mel: 16:15 Up from three and a third, so they got anchored too.

Dan: 16:18 I love the visual of just watching somebody trying to pick up seven cans of soup at the same time. Just go dropping them everywhere.

Mel: 16:25 And we've talked about anchoring but what it's also introducing is a little bit of a social proof which we've talked about in a previous episode where when you see that sign, limit twelve per customer, you automatically think everybody is buying this soup. This is popular soup. You're getting sold to both the social proof and the anchoring bias.

Two for one.

Alright time to wrap this up.

Dan: 16:47 Two for one heuristics with a free trolley and cover!

Mel: 16:50 Time to wrap this up speaking of covers.

Dan: 16:52 Okay, let’s wrap it up.

Mel: 16:53 Basically, anchoring whatever the first piece of information is we see we're gonna place disproportionate value on it. So beware of the first numbers that you're exposing your customer to.

Dan: 17:03 And I guess that means as a brand we've got to acknowledge that most of the time some sort of anchor is already going to exist so we gotta decide where do we want to play relative to the market anchor. Do we want to come in super premium? Do we want to come in super cheap? Do we want to chip in around the edges? But acknowledge that there is already likely an anchor that our customers are working around. And on the off chance that there is not already an anchor don't be afraid to go out an aggressively set one. As people like Apple always do.

Mel: 17:31 Cool so that brings us to the end of this episode and as always if you have any questions or any comments for us you can get us on social media. I'm @DrMelW Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever.

Dan: 17:44 Myspace? IRC?

Mel: 17:46 Oh god.

Dan: 17:47 And I'm @DanMonheit you can get me Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google.

Mel: 17:56 And please join us next time where I will tell you about more of my bad purchasing decisions and I will get Dan to maybe talk about some more reality TV shows.

Dan: 18:05 Hey, can we do an on air steak testing from your new BBQ?

Mel: 18:08 I thought you were going to ask if we could talk about the Kardashians next time.

Dan: 18:09 We are not talking about the Kardashians, never ever ever talking about the Kardashians.

Mel: 18:14 We'll talk about them one day.

#6 Confirmation Bias: Why black Jeeps are everywhere

Turns out we really love being right. So much so that our brains systematically ignore things that don’t fit with what we already believe to be true. In this episode Mel and Dan look at how marketers can make the most of what customers already believe.

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Mel: 00:16 Hi, and welcome to Bad Decisions.

Dan: 00:18 The podcast that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel: 00:21 Why we think what we think.

Dan: 00:22 And how to exploit this stuff for fun and commercial gain.

Mel: 00:25 Always in an ethical and professional manner.

Dan: 00:27 Yep yep yep.

Mel: 00:28 I'm Dr. Mel Weinberg, I'm a performance psychologist.

Dan: 00:30 And I'm Dan Monheit, co-founder of Hardhat, a creative agency built for the digital age. Let's roll.

Mel: 00:41 Alright so we're gonna flip things around a little bit. We're gonna mix things up this time.

Dan: 00:44 Oh okay.

Mel: 00:44 Yeah, we're starting to feel comfortable.

Dan: 00:44 Good, spicy.

Mel: 00:45 We gonna mix it up.

Dan: 00:46 Spicy.

Mel: 00:47 We are going to start with a game.

Dan: 00:49 A game? Good.

Mel: 00:49 I'm calling it a game but really, we're actually bringing the research part forward and you-

Dan: 00:49 You've lost me.

Mel: 00:55 ... Dan Monheit ...

Dan: 00:56 Can we just do a game?

Mel: 00:58 You are the single participant in this study. Do you consent?

Dan: 01:03 If I'm the only participant, I feel like I'm definitely gonna win.

Mel: 01:06 Okay, alright I like the confidence. So, here's how this game is gonna work and just for everybody listening in, Dan has given his consent. He understands that this study meets all ethical guidelines and his results will be kept confidential, just between you and us.

Here's how the game works. I'm gonna tell you a sequence of numbers, okay. And these numbers are bound together by a rule that I'm thinking of.

Dan: 01:29 Okay.

Mel: 01:29 Your job is to figure out what the rule is. Okay?

Dan: 01:29 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mel: 01:32 And the way that you figure out what the rule is, is that you get to tell me a sequence of numbers, that you think matches my rule.

Dan: 01:40 Easy.

Mel: 01:41 I'm gonna tell you whether you’re right or wrong, and after that you'll be able to have a guess at what the rule is.

Dan: 01:45 Okay.

Mel: 01:46 Got it?

Dan: 01:46 Got it.

Mel: 01:47 Alright, the sequence of numbers is: Two, four, eight.

Dan: 01:53 Two, four, eight, okay cool. Three, six, 12.

Mel: 01:59 Yep, that conforms to my rule.

Dan: 02:01 Okay. Five, 10, 20.

Mel: 02:04 Yep, that follows the rule. Do you wanna have a guess at what the rule is?

Dan: 02:06 Okay yeah I got this. It's pretty easy, so you double the number each time.

Mel: 02:06 Nup.

Dan: 02:10 Okay, 12, 24, 30.

Mel: 02:18 Yep.

Dan: 02:20 What, you sure?

Mel: 02:21 Yeah.

Dan: 02:21 That definitely conforms.

Mel: 02:23 Yeah it's my rule, I know what's going on.

Dan: 02:23 10, 20, 30.

Mel: 02:27 Yep.

Dan: 02:29 One, two, three.

Mel: 02:31 Yes. I think we're getting closer.

Dan: 02:33 Okay so three up numbers, three ascending numbers.

Mel: 02:33 Yes!

Dan: 02:38 Yes!

Mel: 02:38 You got it!

Dan: 02:39 I win!

Mel: 02:40 You did win, you were right.

Dan: 02:41 Can we have some winning music Kops?

Mel: 02:47 Well done.

Dan: 02:47 Yes, thank you.

Mel: 02:48 And I'm sure you're wondering what we were trying to show there.

Dan: 02:52 Other than just trying to demonstrate my raw intellectual horsepower.

Mel: 02:56 Which should be on show for everybody all the time, but, what I'm trying to do is demonstrate the confirmation bias. Which is-

Dan: 03:04 The confirmation bias, okay.

Mel: 03:04 ... Yeah, it's the tendency to look for, and actually pay more attention to information that basically affirms what we already believe to be true.

Dan: 03:13 Okay, so what was that?

Mel: 03:15 So in that situation, you didn't know what the rule was, but you had to think of examples. You had a predetermined rule, you had a working hypothesis of what you thought the rule was, right? You thought that it was just doubling each number.

Dan: 03:15 Doubling, yep yep.

Mel: 03:29 And so your first guess was three, six, twelve.

Dan: 03:33 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mel: 03:33 Then you went to five, 10, 20.

Dan: 03:36 Yeah.

Mel: 03:36 Right, so you were consistently giving me instances that conform to the rule that you thought was true.

Dan: 03:42 Got it.

Mel: 03:44 And then you told me what you thought the rule was, and I said, nah that's not the rule. You then thought I was stupid because you had the rule all figured out, forgetting that actually it's my game.

Dan: 03:52 Right. Okay so let me get this straight, so I was asking questions that I thought were gonna get me the right answer?

Mel: 03:59 You were asking questions to confirm your own view of what you thought was going on, yeah.

Dan: 04:03 Oh, my hypothesis, right. So what should I have done?

Mel: 04:05 Well your job was actually to be confirming my hypothesis, not your own.

Dan: 04:08 Right.

Mel: 04:09 So what you should have done would have been to try different things, to figure out whether other things matched the rule, instead of continuing to go with what you thought was the rule, try different things. So that's when you started saying seven, 14, 20.

Dan: 04:25 Yeah.

Mel: 04:25 Something like that, and I said, yep, that conforms the rule too. And then all of a sudden, you realised, hang on, " Now I've got an exception."

Dan: 04:32 Yeah.

Mel: 04:32 Okay, "So now my rule and my thinking of the rule has to expand a little bit," and that's where you got closer to actually figuring out the solution.

Dan: 04:38 And then I got it right.

Mel: 04:39 Yes.

Dan: 04:40 That's important.

Mel: 04:41 Of course. So the idea with the confirmation bias is basically, it's easier for our brain to confirm existing views than to introduce new ones because when we've already got an existing pre-held view, our brain is wired that way, it's easy, it's the default system for our thinking to go in that direction. Anything that comes in, that is contrary to that, actually introduces what we call a state of cognitive dissonance.

Dan: 04:41 Ooh that sounds fancy.

Mel: 05:07 It is some big research words for you. So cognitive dissonance is the state of discomfort that we feel when there's inconsistency between what we think, what we value, what we believe, how we act.

Dan: 05:20 Is that what normal people would call confusion?

Mel: 05:22 Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is.

Dan: 05:22 It's just so fancy.

Mel: 05:25 I just like to use big words for things. So this is a theory that underlies the confirmation bias. And basically, it's such an uncomfortable feeling for us that we're highly motivated to reduce it.

Dan: 05:35 Okay so if I try and understand what was happening in my brain there, so you tell me to guess a rule, I had an idea of what it was, and then without realising it, I was basically asking things that I figured were gonna get me a yes, 'cause that's easier for my brain than asking things that give me a no and then I have to work out what to do with that.

Mel: 05:53 And not only do you like to be right, but you thought you were gonna be right.

Dan: 05:53 Yes.

Mel: 05:53 You thought you were gonna win before we even started the game.

Dan: 05:56 Yeah well, you gotta have confidence in life.

Mel: 06:00 Confidence is good for you.

Dan: 06:01 Yeah, so this is really interesting 'cause in my non-scientific world, where something like this really stands out is, you know that experience I think we've all had where you go to a restaurant and I guess well ... A lot of my stories start in restaurants but we all go there, and you'll be at a restaurant and somebody at your table for some reason, I don't know, they just got out on the wrong side of bed, but they basically decide this restaurant actually sucks. This service is actually really terrible here. And then all of a sudden, all you do is look out for, and as a result, notice things that confirm the fact that the service actually is terrible. Like can you believe when she just poured me water like she spilled a couple of drops? Or when they put the plate in front of me, it wasn't straight?

Mel: 06:46 It's the worst.

Dan: 06:46 It's the worst, right? And it almost blinds you to anything good that might have happened as part of the rest of the meal because you are so set on confirming the fact that this is actually a shit restaurant and it's just ... That's the experience I've decided that I'm going to have here.

Mel: 07:03 Yeah it makes me think of when celebrities or famous sports people have a certain reputation and often it's a bad reputation and so everything that they do is looked at with that view of, “oh that must be something bad and they're a bad person and they're arrogant or they're cocky” or they're this or they're that and everything that they do is actually flavoured by the perception that we think that they're not a very good or noble person worthy of their fame perhaps. And what we tend to discount and actually ignore is anything good that they might do. So I can think of a number of tennis players for example who carry this reputation and even though-

Dan: 07:39 Bad boys, tennis bad boys-

Mel: 07:39 ... The bad boys of tennis, yeah.

Dan: 07:40 It used to be such a gentleman sport before these ruffian kids got involved right?

Mel: 07:44 But now even though some of these ... A couple of these guys, they're actually like in the top 50, some even in the top 10, none of that really gets paid attention to because everybody's just noticing the tantrums that they throw.

Dan: 07:55 Right, and once we decide that these people are tantrum people, they can only throw a tantrum once every 50 matches, but that's the thing we’re looking for and that just confirmed what we already knew, spoiled brat, not deserving of our hard earned taxpayer money. So I guess outside of restaurants, somewhere else that this plays out is if we think about purchases that we make on a very irregular basis. So things like a new bed, you might buy a new bed once every seven years, right?

And when we decide to buy a new bed, there's a part of us that thinks it's only really worth buying beds when they're on sale, and we should try and get a deal when there's a bed and what do you know, when you start looking for a bed, all of a sudden, you happen to notice that all of the bed shops, whether that's Forty Winks or Snooze, happens to be on sale like this very weekend. What are the chances that Forty Winks is having a 40-hour sale in the exact 40-hour period that I've decided I wanna buy a new bed?

Mel: 08:46 So all of a sudden, you're totally prime to be looking for that sort of information because you are in need of a bed.

Dan: 08:51 Yeah, when in reality, the chances of them being on sale this weekend are 100% because actually, they seem to be running 40-hour sales all the time. It seems that every time 40- hour window finishes, a new one starts. And you tend to not even notice these ads when you're not in the market. But as soon as you decide you are in the market, all of a sudden, your consciousness picks it up, and you're all about it. And I guess another place where we all notice this is when we are looking for new cars, and you decide that you're interested in getting a black Jeep Wrangler, and you've never noticed black Jeep Wranglers before and all of a sudden as soon as you start thinking about buying one, next thing you know, you realise that they're absolutely everywhere.

Mel: 09:29 I feel like that happens to me all the time.

Dan: 09:31 All the time.

Mel: 09:31 Every six years or so when I look for a new car. Alright so there's more to this actually than just feeling a sense of psychological discomfort. The evidence shows us that this heuristic actually has a physiological correlate. So it's been shown that we actually experience genuine pleasure indicated by a rush of dopamine in the brain, when we process information that supports that belief. So it genuinely feels good to think that way. And on the flip side, there's also evidence that the state of discomfort is equivalent to a physical experience of pain. So it actually feels good when we confirm our own beliefs and it actually hurts us when we don't.

Dan: 10:08 Right so if we went back to the start of this episode, where I'm trying to work out what this ridiculous rule is that you've got in your mind, my choices are, ask a question that is probably gonna get me a positive dopamine hit with the answer, or ask a question that's probably be like a kick in the nuts when I get the answer. Clearly I'm gonna be seeking the dopamine hit every time.

Mel: 10:28 You pretty much got addicted to it because you just kept asking for that and you kept wanting [to get that] right, you're just like a little monkey in a cage or a little mouse.  

Dan: 10:35 No, I would've gone with like a person in a hospital where they get to administer their own drugs but sure... Monkey in a cage, whatever works, really ... So where this is, I think really getting maybe a bit out of control, where this is really accelerating in our modern digitally lead world, is, if you think about how we consume news, so where confirmation bias really kicks in is around things that we're often emotional and passionate about, and things like political views, right. And so back in the day when there was a handful of newspapers out there and every person's newspaper basically looks the same, what we tend to do is, we read the newspaper, we tend to focus on the articles that support what we already believe, and we disregard all of the ones that don't and what we tend to do is, buy the newspaper that already is the best fit with what our views are, so we can use most of it as confirming our beliefs and ignore as little as possible.

But now, we don't read too many newspapers, and we tend to get our news through self-curated feeds, like Facebook, what we end up doing is building our own newspapers that are just jammed with things that we already believe are true. And so what happens is, we decide that there's too much animal cruelty going on in the world - that's our hypothesis. We then end up following lots and lots of pages and people that agree with and support that, which then creates a reality for ourselves 'cause every time we go and look at the news, there's more and more stories about animal cruelty and all of a sudden, it just amplifies and keeps ratcheting up this perception that we have about what's going on around us is true.

Mel: 12:03 And maybe that's got something to do with the addictive property of something like Facebook, if we're selecting what we wanna see on there and every time it's giving us a dopamine rush, we're all just monkeys in cages.

Dan: 12:15 All of us. At least I'm not a lonely monkey in a cage.

Mel: 12:16 So, tell me Dan, because I'm just the naive psychologist here. Tell me how our marketing audience can use this to help them?

Dan: 12:22 So I think the first thing for a marketer to realise is that when you realise it's so much easier for people to take on information that is consistent with what they already believe, it makes us realise it would be crazy to try and change people's minds. So if we are a business that people have a perception about, unless that perception is horrific, diabolical and damaging, we shouldn't bother with trying to change people's perception of us. Instead, we should take a thing that they already believe, even if it's just a little thing right, a little positive thing, we should do everything we can to ramp up the proof points about why what they already believe is true. So if they believe it a little bit, we should talk about it a lot.

And if we have an aspiration that is completely at odds with what people already believe of us as a business, we're gonna have a massive challenge ahead of us so be ready for a long haul, a very expensive marketing battle, or be considering to try an alternative strategy. A perfect example of this is when we look at what Toyota did, alright. So Toyota have an undeniable, undisputable reputation as a really practical, efficient, cost effective car. So nobody looks at you when you go buy a Toyota and nobody's like, "God she's a bit reckless with her money, she's just gone and bought a new Corolla." It's a really respectable, sensible car to buy.

Now, Toyota obviously had ambitions to also get a reputation in the luxury market, and to sell luxury cars for a lot more money that you can sell a standard Toyota Camry for. So one option they could have done with those is, they could have said, "Well people believe that we are reliable and efficient and practical, and now what we're gonna do is get them to believe that we're all of those things and also luxurious," but instead what they did was they said, "That's gonna be too hard, we're gonna set up a completely separate brand, and that brand is gonna be known as a premium luxury brand." And that's how Lexus ended up coming onto the market and Lexus plays in its space and Lexus is completely believable as a premium, luxurious, high end offering, and has not tarnished Toyota's reputation as a sensible, practical cost efficient car in any way.

Mel: 14:26 Okay.

Dan: 14:26 Brilliant masterstroke.

Mel: 14:28 So what we take from that example, is that what Toyota were able to do, was to build on their customer sense of familiarity, loyalty with the product, not introduce any sense of dissonance, just keep everything familiar while at the same time, they were able to broaden their customer base by introducing a new product by the name of Lexus that didn't introduce any dissonancy, thus are no discomforts, people are ready to go.

Dan: 14:52 Exactly and I guess in your terminology, there's no cognitive dissonance for Lexus because nobody knows what Lexus is. It's a completely new brand.

Mel: 14:59 Cool I got it.

Dan: 15:00 Nice, you could be a marketing something any time now. I guess that we see this in lots of fashion brands as well, where we have businesses that have got a really good reputation for something, but wanna be able to access another part of the market. So you look at Armani or you look at Donna Karan and these guys have an undeniable reputation as high end luxury couture brands, but they want a big piece of the middle market. So rather than taking their Donna Karan or Georgio Armani brands and putting it out the masses, what they do is they create what's known as a diffusion line. So DKNY or Armani Exchange, and it says, it's a completely kind of separate brand, it's not the couture brand that people know and love. It's a completely separate thing and that lets us play in both of those environments.

Mel: 15:46 Okay so it's important to remember that as human beings, we like what is familiar, we like what is comfortable, we like what is consistent, and we literally oppose things that aren't.

Dan: 15:55 Yeah, I kinda like this, let me just throw in one more example also from the fashion world. So Nike obviously have a wonderful reputation, a lot of different athletic pursuits, they have done an incredible job of actually becoming a legitimate brand in the skateboarding world, which took a long time and a lot of very carefully structured deals, to be known as more than just a running or a basketball brand so they have done a great thing with skateboarding. To do the same thing in the surf industry was gonna be another long expensive haul, so instead of trying to do that, they just bought Hurley, and Hurley is already known as a surf brand. So Hurley gets to be about surfing and continue doing its thing so no cognitive dissonance there, Nike gets to keep playing in the traditional sports that it's already been in, no issues there, and everybody's happy and making money.

Mel: 16:43 And I'm happy because I love that you're saying cognitive dissonance as if it's a term that you've heard your entire life.

Dan: 16:48 Yeah no that's the thing, it is, I've always known about cognitive dissonance.

Mel: 16:50 Okay.

Dan: 16:54 Yeah, ooh, feel that dopamine hit there.

Mel: 16:54 So why don't we recap? What have we learnt? Couple of main points. First is that we really like to hear things that are familiar and consistent.

Dan: 17:02 Absolutely, so from a marketing or a comms perspective, the goal is to accentuate what people already believe. If they already believe that we're a bank for small business, ramp that up. If they already believe that we're a university for sports marketing, ramp that up. It's really really tough to change people's minds. So go with what works and if you really have aspirations to be somewhere out of your category, be ready for a long battle or consider a greenfield approach.

Mel: 17:29 And just to finish off and to bring back the human side to it a little bit as well, I think it's so important that as individuals who are curious about the world and how the world works, that, we recognise that we have a tendency to confirm information or to accept information that we already believe to be true, but, that's not how we learn and that's not how science progresses. I think it's important that we think or we ask ourselves the question, "What am I missing?" And instead of going around seeking to validate your own views, even as pleasurable as that may be from a neuro-scientific perspective, look for instances that don't fit the rule. Look for the exceptions to the rule and expand your horizons.

Dan: 18:08 And look for other places for your dopamine hits right?

Mel: 18:11 Yeah, there are many other ways you can get it.

Dan: 18:13 Good, alright, keep it ethical Mel. Dr. Mel.

Mel: 18:16 And as always, if you have any questions, you can tweet us, my handle is @DrMelW.

Dan: 18:21 Are you on Twitter?

Mel: 18:22 Yes.

Dan: 18:22 Do you like check it?

Mel: 18:22 Yeah.

Dan: 18:24 Yeah, alright. Anywhere else?

Mel: 18:26 Instagram.

Dan: 18:27 Insta, do people send you photos on Insta?

Mel: 18:30 It's your turn. Dan, where would you like people to send you photos to?

Dan: 18:34 You can send me photos, thoughts, comments, perspectives @DanMonheit, no Dr. just @DanMonheit.

Mel: 18:34 No doctor.

Dan: 18:39 No doctor. Get me on Twitter, or Instagram, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, or Google Plus? No Google Plus.

Mel: 18:53 Catch you next time.

Dan: 18:54 See ya.