How Prices Anchor our Estimates of Value

The following commercial contains an excellent example of the Anchoring Heuristic. The anchoring heuristic is when an individual relies too heavily on an initial piece of information (the anchor) when making a decision or judgment. In this commercial they exploit our use of this heuristic by throwing out a price. This fixes in our mind a sense of the value of this product. When the actual cost of the product is revealed it sounds like a fantastic price because we are anchored to the initial price that was suggested.

At 00:58, we see the pitchman throw out the price of $20. By the end of the commercial we are being offered two of the product plus two mini-rollers all for the low, low price of only $10. This then sounds like an amazing deal because we are anchored to that initial $20 price and use that as our comparison in determining the value of this product. This is a basic practice in modern advertising, and I am sure readers can think of examples of many other commercials they have seen which use exactly the same techniques and exploit the same cognitive process. This is why critical thinking and an awareness of how our minds work is so important as it helps us become aware of and thus avoid getting taken in by these advertising tricks.

Fake News!

This video gives a nice discussion of the ways in which fake news spreads through the Internet and social media.





As a follow up to the issues presented in the video, here is a more recent article from Politico which covers the same territory and reaches much the same conclusion.

I want a gravy hot tub!

The grammatical ambiguity in this sign speaks for itself.

Another Door Study

Here is another really good video about Inattentional Blindness and Change Blindness.

This video is particularly good because of the commentary from Daniel Simons, one of the main researchers of this phenomenon.

A Guide to Evaluating Media Sources

Here is a very interesting chart that is quite useful for evaluating sources:

Click on it to make it larger.

Someone doesn't understand the First Amendment

Here is a nice example of a Slippery Slope:

One of the oldest political tricks in the book

Here is a very nice example of a Red Herring from The Simpsons:


As we can see, Mayor Quimby is trying to distract the public from taxation issues by blaming immigrants for all their problems. Although this episode, "Much Apu About Nothing" originally aired in 1996, current political events reveal the extent to which this is, despite being fallacious, still an enormously effective political strategy.