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Entry 086 of 93Sourced

The Decoy Effect

Adding a third, clearly worse option changes which of the other two people choose, without changing either of them.

How it sounds

  1. You Add a third option that is worse than your target option on every dimension
  2. Buyer (the decoy makes the target option look like the obvious win)
  3. You Present all three side by side, without pushing the target explicitly
  4. Result More people choose your target plan over the cheaper one

The rest of this entry is in the full archive

  • How an asymmetrically dominated option pulls choice toward your target tier
  • The difference between a decoy and a bait-and-switch that gets you caught
  • Where the effect breaks down and just looks like padding
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More in Persuasion principles

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  1. Put a defensible number on the table first.
  2. (negotiates relative to that number, even if it was arbitrary)
  3. Frame the option you want against a higher reference point
Full archive
Persuasion principlesSourced

Anchoring

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Science (1974)
  1. How do we know this will actually work for us?
  2. Across the last dozen firms we did this for, the bottleneck was almost always X.
  3. They relax, hearing guidance instead of a pitch.
Persuasion principlesSourced

Authority

Robert Cialdini, Influence (1984)
  1. Make the request, then add "but you're free to say no."
  2. (feels their autonomy respected, and agrees more often, not less)
  3. Compliance goes up compared to the same ask without the line
Persuasion principlesSourced

But You Are Free

Nicolas Guéguen and Alexandre Pascual, Current Research in Social Psychology (2000)