The Illusion of Choice by Richard Shotton

Author:Richard Shotton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harriman House
Published: 2023-03-13T12:48:50+00:00

We tend to fixate on the headline number, rather than what that number represents.

In 1994, Veronika Denes-Raj and Seymour Epstein from the University of Massachusetts showed participants two bowls filled with different mixes of red and white jellybeans. They then asked the participants to choose which bowl they would like to pick from. If they drew a red jellybean, they would win $1.

The first bowl was smaller with just ten jellybeans, one of which was red. The second, larger bowl had 100 beans in it, eight of which were red. Looking at the odds, the first bowl gave the pickers the best chance of success. However, nearly half of the participants opted for the suboptimal choice.

The psychologists repeated the experiment seven times. Each time they varied the mix of colours in the bowl with 100 beans. It had anywhere between five and nine of the all-important red ones. The ratio in the smaller bowl stayed the same. That meant the odds were always worse in the large bowl.

Across the studies, 82% of the participants picked from the larger bowl at least once. They chose the bowl with the larger absolute number of winning beans, rather than the bowl with the best proportions.

According to the psychologists:

Subjects reported that although they knew the probabilities were against them, they felt they had a better chance when there were more red beans.

They consistently found that subjects focused on the headline number (i.e., the number of red beans, the numerator), rather than the number of times the event could occur (i.e., all the beans, the denominator).

You can make denominator neglect work for you. Here’s how.

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