The Decoy Effect
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“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” - Albert Einstein
Towards the end of making math more meaningful, I’d like to discuss something in recent news that resonates with that theme.
While listening to NPR, I heard an interesting story about how political candidates affect each other. You can hear a podcast of the same story here. You can also read the Washington Post’s story (which broke first).
The story concerns what is called “The Decoy Effect” or “Asymmetrical Dominance Effect” in psychology.
In simple terms, the Decoy Effect suggests that if you are faced with two popular choices, the outcome of your choice can be subtly affected by the introduction of a third, less popular choice (the decoy). But the outcome may not be affected in the way you might expect. The introduction of the third choice would have you lean towards choosing the popular choice that is most like the decoy.
The above-mentioned article concerns itself with front-running candidates for the 2008 presidential race. (more…)
