In the TED Talk video we watched today, the speaker talked about how we are not necessarily always in full control of our decisions or not necessarily to the extent that we think we are. He states that there are too many things that affect our perceptions, illusions, that influence us to make certain decisions that, at the time, we believe are 100% our own.
He talks about illusions first pertaining to vision. He emphasizes and uses examples to show how we, as humans, have a tendency to be fooled by our vision. Vision is something we are good at, so how often are we fooled by the things we are not necessarily so good at?
I liked the example the author used about the website with the three offers on subscriptions to a magazine (at least that's what I thought it was). The three options were: Web subscription $89.99, Print subscription $149.99, and Web and Print subscriptions $149.99. He first showed a survey on the most popular choice between the three, and the most popular choice was the Web and Print subscriptions, then the Web subscriptions. No one voted for the Print subscription obviously because it was a bad deal to pay the same amount for less. After removing the Print subscription option, the results changed. The most popular option became the Web subscriptions while the least popular option became the Print subscription and Web subscription option. The results flipped after one totally irrelevant option was removed. How? Though this option was unfavorable, it was still influential. With its presence, it seems that the Print and Web subscription option is a great deal, but without it, it seems as if there are only two options: one expensive and one less expensive despite the benefits.
He also talked about how someone who looks similar to you yet slightly uglier can make you look more attractive. This is because you now become the "better version" and are now more favorable. If there is no comparison between you and your friend then neither can necessarily be viewed as a "better" or "worse" version of the other.
It was also intriguing when he spoke about how we naturally group similar things together regardless of the topic. He showed a bar graph displaying organ donors in different country. Countries like France and Germany were on different ends of the bar graph. This fools our minds because we tend to group together places we find similar such as France and Germany. Therefore, it is hard for us to wrap our heads around one of the countries being abundant in organ donors while the other was scarce in organ donors. Because, in our minds, we group these countries together, we believe they should be similar in their amount of organ donors even though it is an unrelated topic.
Here are some of the main ideas highlighted by the video:
He talks about illusions first pertaining to vision. He emphasizes and uses examples to show how we, as humans, have a tendency to be fooled by our vision. Vision is something we are good at, so how often are we fooled by the things we are not necessarily so good at?
I liked the example the author used about the website with the three offers on subscriptions to a magazine (at least that's what I thought it was). The three options were: Web subscription $89.99, Print subscription $149.99, and Web and Print subscriptions $149.99. He first showed a survey on the most popular choice between the three, and the most popular choice was the Web and Print subscriptions, then the Web subscriptions. No one voted for the Print subscription obviously because it was a bad deal to pay the same amount for less. After removing the Print subscription option, the results changed. The most popular option became the Web subscriptions while the least popular option became the Print subscription and Web subscription option. The results flipped after one totally irrelevant option was removed. How? Though this option was unfavorable, it was still influential. With its presence, it seems that the Print and Web subscription option is a great deal, but without it, it seems as if there are only two options: one expensive and one less expensive despite the benefits.
He also talked about how someone who looks similar to you yet slightly uglier can make you look more attractive. This is because you now become the "better version" and are now more favorable. If there is no comparison between you and your friend then neither can necessarily be viewed as a "better" or "worse" version of the other.
It was also intriguing when he spoke about how we naturally group similar things together regardless of the topic. He showed a bar graph displaying organ donors in different country. Countries like France and Germany were on different ends of the bar graph. This fools our minds because we tend to group together places we find similar such as France and Germany. Therefore, it is hard for us to wrap our heads around one of the countries being abundant in organ donors while the other was scarce in organ donors. Because, in our minds, we group these countries together, we believe they should be similar in their amount of organ donors even though it is an unrelated topic.
Here are some of the main ideas highlighted by the video:
- Illusions are unavoidable
- We often see illusions when it comes to vision
- We're good at vision, what about things we're not good at?
- We often group places or things we find similar together in regards to everything
- UK v. France organ donation
- People who create or run things have a huge influence on us
- We are not actually in control of as much as we think we are
- No decisions is purely ever our own
- Irrational decisions can seem extremely rational one day and completely insane the next
- Every option influences a decision, even if it's an option nobody wants
- The presence of an option that no one wants that is similar but slightly worse than an option people may want makes the "better" option immensely more favorable