Three Hidden Things That Impact Your Decisions.
Most of you familiar with an American-Israeli professor Dan Ariely,
Due to a severe Accident, Dan Ariely’s 70% body was burned, For its Treatment, he spent three years in the hospital. In those three years, the most difficult thing for him was the Procedure of removing Bandages from his body. Removing bandages from the skin is a different thing, But removing bandages from the burnt skin almost from no skin is a very painful process, which we can’t even imagine. Every day nurse used to apply ointment, and then starts removing bandages from his body, she starts from his feet and then reaches his head, which almost takes 1 hour to complete the process. This 1 hour was the most painful time for Dan. He used to Plead nurses, to try some other ways, or there must be other methods, by which this process will become less painful for him. But the nurse never listened to him and she used to say, that she knows that this is the correct process and asks Dan to keep quiet and to have patience.
After three years of his painful treatment, Dan joined university, where he got the chance to do experiments and find out the answers of his questions. Which were; to provide patients or anyone, by giving negative experience like pain then what will be the most correct and the proper method or a process. He did many experiments, after which he came to know, that the process of removing bandages done by the nurses was completely wrong. He would have suffered less, if the nurse would have started removing bandages from the head, which is the most painful part, and goes on removing till fee, in the decreasing trend. it would have become easier if she has removed bandages slowly by taking more time, and by giving breaks for relaxation. It was not at all; that the nurse’s intention was to give pain to Dan or they were less experienced or deliberately removed bandages by the wrong method, but the reason for this was the Wrong Decisions.
This thing made Dan worried because when nurses can take a bad decision on doing such important work even having so much knowledge and experience, then what about other professionals and normal people like us. How much bad decision we have taken, and must not have realized, because of this Dan started an in-depth study. Through which he came to know much such irrational behavior of humans which are predictable, means; which we do on our regular basis which is not good for us. So today I will share some interesting studies from his book, which can be very useful for us.
- The truth About Relativity.
One day Dan was surfing the internet and he saw a magazine ad, which was like; The first option, Internet Only Subscription for $59, Second Option, Print Only Subscription for $125, and the Third Option, Print And Internet Subscription for the same $125.
After reading the last option, Dan thought how useless the second option is. Why this magazine has even kept it, no one will be so stupid to choose the second option, but he knew that the advertising people are not so stupid. Why would they keep it without any reason, so Dan did an experiment, where he showed this ad to 100 students and asked them to choose one of them, which resulted in, 16 students chose the first option, no one selected the second option, and 84 students chose the third option. The result was the way, the author was expecting. Hence, no one has selected the second option, so the author again did the same experiment, But for this time he removed the second option, which resulted in, this time 68 students chose the First option, whereas, only 32 students chose the second option. Now, what can be the reason for this different result? The reason for this is, not having that second useless option in the list, which is called Decoy by the Economist, which helps to show the third option more attractive.
Humans have the habit of comparing things, we compare our scores, grades with others, our house, salary, and almost everything we compare. Now this comparison can be good sometimes, but many times we can take the wrong decisions. I am giving a visual example of this.
if I ask you, out of these two circles, which one is the bigger and which one is the smaller? So any normal person will say that the left side circle is the bigger one, and the right side circle is smaller, But in reality, both circles have the same size. But we think that the right side circle is small, because, in comparison, the right side surrounded circles are small. Now again we talk about that ad. A normal person does not know, what can be the price of a magazine, so when a person sees the first option, they find it good but when they see the second option, they find it expensive, but, when they go to the third option, they find it less expensive compare to the second option, because of which most of the people go for the third option, whereas, their work can be done by the first option.
2. The problem of Procrastination.
Due to an experiment, Dan gives his university students three assignments, if they submit on time, they will get the full marks, and it will also help them to increase their grades in finals, but, if they do late submissions, Dan will deduct their marks, which will affect their grades in finals, he gave such Assignments in Different classes, Class A, Class B, Class C.
In which he asked, Class A to choose amongst themselves any three deadlines for submissions, For Class B, He did not give any deadlines And asked them to submit an assignment at the end of the semester, and for the Class C, by himself, he gives three deadlines. As an outcome, in all the classes, class C submits the assignment first and on time, by which they all get the good grades, and scores good marks, Then class A, do the submissions, Lastly, the submission was done by the class B, To them, any deadlines were not given. This is the result of Proofs the Parkinson Law, which says, ‘To complete any kind of work, we take that much time, which is available to us”. Means, To complete any simple work, within a week or two weeks, we will finish work by utilizing the entire time given to us.
So, the thing which we learn here is, before completing any task or work we must give ourselves a deadline. If we do not finish our work on given deadline, then there must be some kind of penalty, like; if any work is not completed before time, or not going to gym on time or daily, then the penalty will be giving a treat to friends or anything which forces you to complete your work on time.
3. The Cost Of Social Norms.
Suppose you are going somewhere, then out of a sudden person asks you to keep his heavy luggage inside his car, which is parked far, you feel like helping that person, so you take his luggage and keep it inside his car. Now, if that person instead of saying thank you, a $1 note gives you, this gesture of him will make you feel angry, and some people will say something bad to him. This will happen because the world works on two types of norms, First, Social Norms, and the second is Market norm. Social Norm means, the work which we do on the basis of humanity, in return we do not expect any favor or money, and on the other side, Market norm means, the work which we do to get the amount as per the market, or else to get any benefit. Both of these norms are totally different, and the author asks not to mix them. It has much practical use, Dan has done the experiment, In which he asked the lawyers, to fight a case for poor people, in order to take less amount as compare to the market price. Almost every lawyer said No to him, after which, he again asked some lawyers to fight cases for free, just for the sake of poor people and for the charity purpose. Surprisingly, most of the lawyers said yes to him. So he concludes, if you want someone to work for you, then either, pay them as per the market norms, or to use the Social Norm. But, never mix both together. Otherwise, you will not get the proper outcome and do remember Social norms, proofs to be more powerful than market norms.
This interesting fact, I have shared with you is from the book Predictably Irrationality, by Dan Ariely.
This book makes us understand different things and helps us to take a proper decision.
Thanks for reading, I think this will help you to make better decisions.
