The One About Manipulating Choice

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:00]:

When we make choices, we make them of our own accord, right? Nobody can force us or manipulate us into making the choices they want us.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:07]:

To make, can they? Let’s find out.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:43]:

Hello. Welcome to another fantastic episode. And today we’re taking a look at how choice can be manipulated. This is used or misused a lot in advertising and in marketing where they give us the appearance of choice and indeed we do have a choice, but they manipulate that choice in such a way as to guide us towards the choice they want us to make. Now obviously it doesn’t work with everyone. It is a numbers game. But by using these manipulative approaches they can certainly increase the likelihood of us making the choice they want to make, which is usually to buy the more expensive option or the preferred option that they want to get rid of. Not always the most expensive as we’ll find out.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:32]:

If you find this interesting, useful, do check out the other episodes, do give us a like a comment, a share, a subscribe rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. All helps this to get spread much further. A lot of the way in which choice is manipulated is by making use of the power of three. Three has an almost magical effect. Now it’s not some mystical, mythical, esoteric thing, it’s just psychologically the way it works. If you have one data point, well, you’ve got a point. You can’t really make any decisions around it. If you have two, well now you can kind of compare them, but it’s still pretty limited in what you can do when you have three data points, three options, three pieces of information.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:27]:

Well, now you can start to make meaningful comparisons. Now you can start to start to see patterns and make decisions based upon those patterns. Three has such a strong impact on our psyche. It’s used often in spoken word and in written word. Think about Goldilocks and the three bears, the three wise men. Caesar’s words apparently when he landed in Britain, at the time when he weedy weechy, I came, I saw, I conquered. Or Churchill’s, one of Churchill’s famous quotes never before in the field of human conflict has so much be knowed by so many to so few three. It really has a strong impact on our psychology and our unconscious mind.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:23]:

And unfortunately, those who seek to manipulate us to buy their stuff know this and will make full use of it if they possibly can. Very often they will give you three choices. Give you a choice of three options. If they give just one single option. That’s a bit of a risk for me. It’s a take it or leave it approach. Either you take that or you leave it. Bit risky with two options.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:50]:

Well, no real way of making a good comparison. So very often there’s a limited frame of reference. So again, it’s like, I’m not sure I’ll leave it if you have like 510, 20 options, well, now your overload is really hard to make a decision. But when you’ve got about three, when you got three options there, it really gives us something that we can compare. However, we can also be easily manipulated. One way they might do it is, and as I say, it’s not always the most expensive option that they want us to buy. For example, suppose they’ve got a pack and a pack is 150 quid. Whatever’s in this package is 150 pounds.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:38]:

They offer just that. At 150 pounds, people go, well, I don’t know, is it good value, is it bad value? I have no way of knowing. So you might offer two packs, 150 pounds, and a slightly smaller package at 100 pounds, which has maybe half the things that are in it. So now the 150 pound package seems a little bit more enticing. But that 100 pound package, it’s only missing a couple of things. Maybe that’s the one to go for. The power comes in when they add a third one. Now this one they’re going to price much, much higher.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:14]:

Perhaps 500 pounds has everything that’s in the 150 pound package plus one more item, just one more item. And it might even be an item where you think, well, do I really need that? Now, all of a sudden, the 150 pound option becomes a lot more attractive than the 100 pound option. Because 100 a pound option, we might get a couple of things in it. The 150 pounds option, it’s only 50 pounds more. We get twice as much stuff, the top option, which adds one more thing, and that’s over twice, two and a half times the price. All of a sudden, this middle option becomes a lot more appealing. They never intended to sell the top option top package. I mean, if somebody buys it, brilliant, excellent, good result.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:08]:

But what it does is it draws more people to buy the 150 pound option than to buy the 50 pound option. Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that also manipulative? How can you guard yourself against that? Well, when you see a range of packages are offered and you’re comparing them and you’re seeing what’s in each one, don’t compare each one with each other, but look at what’s in each one and see, do I need all of those things? I mean, yes, it’s only 50 pounds more for those extra two bits, but do I actually need them? Don’t get swayed by the fact that the top option is 500 pounds. You can save 350 by just eliminating one of those things and going for the middle option. Compare each option by itself. Don’t fall for the power of three and forcing you into making decisions.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:09]:

Excuse me.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:10]:

Another way I’ve seen this done, and you may have come across this before. It’s an option that’s taught in a lot of marketing and a lot of sales approaches as well. So this does get used out there. It will be used. You may well see it. I know I’ve seen it, and I know I fell for it many, many years ago. Fell for this exact thing. I call it the decoy effect.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:38]:

And just suppose, suppose you’ve got a publication, okay, and you want to offer a subscription. Now, you might offer a web only subscription for $59, so they get access for the year to your publication, but they can only access it through the website for $59. Or you might say, okay, well, here’s the print option for $125, and you can get access to the web as well. So $59 you get web only, $125 you get web and print combined. Which one to go for? Well, yeah, print one’s. Nice. But you know what? I can save a bit of money. I can save nearly 70 quid.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:32]:

Save a fair bit of money, save yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:35]:

66.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:35]:

$66 can save money by going for just the web only one. How could that publication boost the numbers of people going for the web and print one? Well, they do that by adding a decoy option. And in this case, the decoy option might be you’ve got the web only version at 59 pounds. You got the web and print option at 125 pounds, dollars, whatever currency. Add the print only option, but also price it at 125. Well, that’s ridiculous. Nobody’s going to go for the print option at 125, because for the same price, you could go for the web and print option. So why bother having that option in there? Why indeed? Power of three.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:29]:

We’ve now got three options there. Comparisons are being made, even if it’s just at the unconscious level, and it does have a very powerful effect. There is a professor of behavioral economics, his name is Dan Airley, and he did a little experiment around this. He presented his students with three options, those three options, and he asked them to choose which one they would go for. Now, as you might expect, nobody went for the print only option. Of course, they’re not going to crazy. 84% went for the web and print. 16% went for web only.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:18]:

So the print option does seem to be a waste of time, right? Nobody’s going to go for it. However, he did another experiment. He repeated the experiment with a different class, but only offered the web only and the web and print option. So he took out the print only option. So it was web only at 59. Web and print at 125. Same prices, same everything. He just took out that print only.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:43]:

Option this time.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:47]:

32% of people went for the print, web and print version, and 68% went for the web only. So by having that effectively pointless print only option in there, they went from 32% of people going for the web and print option, the expensive option, to 84% more than double the number of people went for the more expensive option when that decoy option was in there. Isn’t that interesting? Now, I said, this has been used in the wild as the Economist magazine used that as their subscription model for a period. I don’t know if they still do, but they certainly offered those three options, significantly boosting the number of people going for the web and print option. I remember when I was in a professional society and they offered exactly the same thing. This was 15 years ago. Maybe they offered exactly the same three sets of choices. And I remember going, you know what, I’m going to go for the web and print one because that gets the print and the web for the same price as print only.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:00]:

Ha go me getting the bargain. Of course, you know what happened, right? The print copies arrived, sat to one side, never read them because I’d already read it on the web, so I was paying a lot more than I needed to. And it happens to so many of.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:16]:

Us.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:21]:

Because we’re talking about three. I’ll give you a third way in which this sort of manipulating choice with the power of three can be done and indeed is done. It combines it with FOMO fear of missing out. It’s usually done interactively, so it’s an in person thing. Although there are various options which do exist online, they have found ways to do it online as well. You start off with a proposal which has got three options.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:51]:

Okay?

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:53]:

Each proposal is a separately costed option in a separate document. You place all three options on the table and then very quickly, you make an excuse for removing the top option. Maybe you tell them it’s going to be beyond their budget or they can’t afford it, or it’s got more than they need. So you take the top one off the table. But telling them, yeah, that’s going to be out of your price range or that’s out of your budget, that’s more than you can afford. You’re not going to need everything that’s in there. You don’t need the full super deluxe package. You are appearing to be helpful.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:27]:

You appear to be giving the impression of helping them to narrow down their choices by removing something that’s not relevant for them. However, as Chief Wiggum in The Simpsons said, what is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery? This was when Ralph and Bart were trying to get into this cupboard that they’d been specifically forbidden to access. By withdrawing that option, we have suddenly made that option a forbidden option of mystery. We’ve made it a whole lot more exciting, a whole lot more desirable. It’s something we can’t have. We’ve been told we can’t have it. Suddenly we want it now. So often we hear that right, you don’t want to do something, then you’re told you can’t do it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:16]:

It’s like, Well, I want to do that. Now, that’s the same with this. We’re drawn to what we can’t have. You’ve just told that person they can’t have it, and in a way, you’ve almost impugned them. Well, you can’t have that because you can’t afford it. It’s out of your price range. You don’t deserve the top level. Whoa, wait a minute.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:36]:

Psychologically, they’re going, just a minute. Put that option back on the table. I want to look at it. I want to look at all three options. In fact, very often what happens and multimillion dollar contracts have hinged on this. Often what will happen, they’ll go, hey, wait a minute. Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t afford. Don’t you tell me what I do and don’t need.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:02]:

Put that back on the table. Put that one back. In fact, forget those other let me look at this one. And they’ll start looking through it, and they will then start justifying why they can afford it. And in fact, darn it, they deserve it. And why would you insult them by offering the lower two? They sell themselves on this more expensive package, which they quite possibly don’t need, but they are now in this mindset of, you’ve told me I can’t have that one. You told me I can’t have this. Option three.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:38]:

This is why I want it. You’ve told me I can’t afford it. Who are you to tell me I can’t afford it? Look, of course I can afford it. In fact, you know what? This is exactly the one I want. They end up selling themselves on the more expensive one, and all the salesperson has to do is sit back look, suitably contrite and crest fallen and oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean and then take the order. Three different ways in which the power of three can and is often used against us to manipulate us into buying stuff we don’t need, don’t want, maybe even can’t afford. Hopefully it’s given you a little bit of insight into what’s going on.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:17]:

Hopefully that’s got you thinking. Maybe that’s got you thinking. No, you know what? I have fallen for one of those. There’s no shame in that. Many, many of us have. As I say, I fell for one of those. In fact, I’ve probably fallen for most of them at some point at some point in my life, before I was aware of what’s going on. Just something to watch out for, something to be aware of, just something you can keep an eye out for so you can see when this is being used against you.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:47]:

Hopefully you found that useful and interesting. Give us a like a comment, share a subscribe. Check out antimanipulation.com if you want to find out more about how this stuff works, about how the unscrupulous manipulate us to buying their stuff. And either way, take care. Look after yourself. And I’ll catch you in another episode very soon.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:08]:

Bye for now.