How marketers manipulate you
Jeff Atwood, a programmer and experienced blogger, recently wrote about Predictably Irrational, a book that attempts to uncover the truths behind why we make the decisions we make. The article is rather long, but worth reading if you’re interested in learning about how marketing-folk do what they do to get you to make the choice they want you to make.
Here’s an excerpt from the book that simply tickled my fancy:
Ariely and Shin conducted an experiment on MIT students. They devised a computer game which offered players three doors: Red, Blue, and Green. You started with 100 clicks. You clicked to enter a room. Once in a room, each click netted you between 1-10 cents. You could also switch rooms (at the cost of a click). The rooms were programmed to provide different levels of rewards (there was variation within each room’s payoffs, but it was pretty easy to tell which one provided the best payout).
