"Imagine I give you a choice: Do you want to go for a weekend to Rome, all expenses paid -- hotel, transportation, food, a continental breakfast, everything -- or a weekend in Paris? Now, weekend in Paris, weekend in Rome -- these are different things. They have different food, different culture, different art. Imagine I added a choice to the set that nobody wanted. Imagine I said, "A weekend in Rome, a weekend in Paris, or having your car stolen?" It's a funny idea, because why would having your car stolen, in this set, influence anything? But what if the option to have your car stolen was not exactly like this? What if it was a trip to Rome, all expenses paid, transportation, breakfast, but it doesn't include coffee in the morning? If you want coffee, you have to pay for it yourself, it's two euros 50.Now in some ways, given that you can have Rome with coffee, why would you possibly want Rome without coffee? It's like having your car stolen. It's an inferior option. But guess what happened? The moment you add Rome without coffee, Rome with coffee becomes more popular, and people choose it. The fact that you have Rome without coffee makes Rome with coffee look superior, and not just to Rome without coffee -- even superior to Paris."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Educators from the United StatesPsychologists from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from New York CityEconomists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Are we in control of our own decisions?", Ted.com (December 2008)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Dan Ariely
7 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Dan Ariely →
Related Quotes
"The basic principle with self-herding is that people don't know what they want very often. Figuring out our preferenc…"
"I mean, today you probably will have some opportunities to take stuff and put it in your backpack, and nobody would k…"
"With technological changes, there have also been changes to irrationality. We have been bombarded with more informati…"
"What we find is that lots of people can cheat a little bit. If we cheat a lot, we … face the possibility that we will…"
"One of the basic principles from behavioral economics is the environment matters. If you think about it, what is our …"
"Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us s…"
"… Hassan promotes the BITE model as a scientific method for identifying “destructive cults,” claiming it can distingu…"
"It is very unlikely that we would drive to extinction any native Martian microorganisms in the process of extending t…"
"We do not need a lunar-orbiting station to go to the Moon. We do not need such a station to go to Mars. We do not nee…"
"Musk can probably build a giant AI data centre on the Moon. But if it can’t compete with much cheaper alternatives on…"