Choose Carefully

All of us make choices all the time, and we may think we're making those choices freely. But psychologist Eric Johnson says there's an architecture behind the way choices are presented to us, and this invisible architecture can influence decisions both large and small.

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[A boy turns to take a path in a maze.]

Choose Carefully

By Hidden Brain Staff

/ January 4, 2022

All of us make choices all the time, and we may think we’re making those choices freely. But psychologist Eric Johnson says there’s an architecture behind the way choices are presented to us, and this invisible architecture can influence decisions both large and small.

Additional Resources

BOOKS:

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters, by Eric Johnson, Riverhead Books, 2021.

The Adaptive Decision Maker, by John Payne, James Bettman and Eric Johnson, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Decision Research: A Field Guide, by John Carroll and Eric Johnson, Sage Publications, 1990.

RESEARCH:

Local Warming is Real: A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Recent Temperature on Climate Change Beliefs, by Eli R. Sugerman, Ye Li, Eric Johnson, Current Opinion in Behavioral Science, 2021.

Can Green Defaults Reduce Meat Consumption?, by Johanna Meier, et. al, SSRN, 2021.

Effect of Default Options in Advance Directives on Hospital-Free Days and Care Choices Among Seriously Ill Patients: A Randomized Clinical Trial, by Scott Halpern, et. al, JAMA Network Open, 2020.

The Power of Rankings: Quantifying the Effect of Rankings on Online Consumer Search and Purchase Decisions, by Raluca M. Ursu, Marketing Science, 2018.

Choose to Lose: Health Plan Choices From a Menu with Dominated Option, by Saurabh Bhargava, et. al, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2017.

Default Options in Advance Directives Influence How Patients Set Goals For End-Of-Life Care,by Scott D. Halpern, et. al, Health Affairs, 2013.

Clouds Make Nerds Look Good: Field Evidence of the Impact of Incidental Factors on Decision Making, by Uri Simonsohn, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2007.

How Consumers Are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product, by Irwin P. Levin and Gary J. Gaeth, Journal of Consumer Research, 1988.

GRAB BAG:

Winston Churchill’s speech on the House of Commons rebuilding on October 28, 1943.

Mentalist Derren Brown’s subliminal advertising trick from 2007.

Transcript

*The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode.
Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.*

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. It was November, 2004. Jeopardy Champion, Ken Jennings kept winning and winning and winning.Alex Trebek: He now has $1,004,960.Shankar Vedantam: His streak seemed unbreakable.Alex Trebek: And now, a total of $2,006,300.Shankar Vedantam: With Christmas approaching on his 75th appearance on the show, the champion seemed likely to win yet again. It was Final Jeopardy, the last challenge of the episode. If Ken got this one answer right, the streak would continue. Host Alex Trebek presented the question.Alex Trebek: The category is business and industry and here is the clue, ladies and gentlemen. Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white color employees work only four months a year. 30 seconds, good luck.Shankar Vedantam: Columbia University psychologist, Eric Johnson describes what happened next.Eric Johnson: So, Jennings thought and thought it must be seasonal, it must be something about Christmas. So, he was thinking maybe it's like someone who does delivery like FedEx or maybe it's people who put up sidewalk centers like Salvation Army.Shankar Vedantam: The other contestant with a chance to win, Nancy Zerg, went in a different direction. She picked the tax preparation company, H&R Block, which hires a lot of accountants each year come tax season.Alex Trebek: Nancy, you wrote down your response rather quickly, I thought. I hope it's correct. Let's take a look.Nancy Zerg: I hope so too.Alex Trebek: What is H&R Block? You're right, your wager, 4401 taking you up to 14,401, you have a $1 lead over Ken Jennings right now. And his final response was FedEx. His wager was 5601. He winds up in second place with 8790 and Nancy Zerg, congratulations. You are indeed a giant killer, our new Jeopardy Champion, 14,401. Ken, take a look at the audience.Shankar Vedantam: Ken Jennings knew that H&R Block hired lots of white collar workers during tax preparation season. It's just that once his mind gravitated to companies that were especially active around Christmas, he couldn't pull himself out of that mental groove.Eric Johnson: And he claims later on, there was absolutely no way that came to his mind, he was just blocked by his initial thoughts. This is something psychologists call inhibition, that when you think about one thing you can't think about the other.Shankar Vedantam: This week on Hidden Brain, how our minds can be influenced by the way options are presented to us and how we can make choices more wisely.Shankar Vedantam: As we move through life, we are constantly making choices. When we buy a car, choose a college or pick a romantic partner. We think about the ramifications of different options. One thing we usually don't consider: how the way in which choices are presented to us, shapes what we decide to do. At Columbia University, Eric Johnson studies how the presentation of choices can influence people and how these insights can be used for both good and evil. Eric Johnson, welcome to Hidden Brain.Eric Johnson: Very glad to be with you, Shankar.Shankar Vedantam: Some years ago, Eric, a graduate student came to you and said she could change the sofas that customers would buy by changing the background on a website selling the sofas. You were skeptical that this was the case so she ran a lab experiment to convince you, can you tell me what she did and what happened?Eric Johnson: What she suggested is that the background, what's called the wallpaper website, might influence people's choice. So, she went out and designed several different website backgrounds. One for example, would be clouds embedded on a blue sky and she showed that when you asked people what they thought of when they saw that, they would say comfort. Another one might be dollar bills embedded on a green page. And she asked people what they thought of, not surprising they would say cost. She then gave people a task where they had to choose a couch. One couch was expensive and comfortable, the other couch was actually cheap and uncomfortable. And what she found is that people actually chose a couch that was more compatible w

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