 Imagine yourself at a car dealership, and you've got your eye set on two shiny new cars. One of these cars is priced at $30,000, and the other one priced at $40,000. You like the $30,000 car, but you are also hoping to get a car with leather seats, which this particular car does not have. On the other hand, the $40,000 car does have leather seats, but it also seems quite expensive by comparison, doesn't it? Difficult decision? Well, wait. The salesman at the dealership now wants to show you yet another option to consider. It's another beautiful car, but only this one is priced at $50,000, and unfortunately, it also does not have leather seats. Now give it some thought. Which car are you thinking of buying? Suddenly, that $40,000 car doesn't seem so expensive anymore, does it? Especially now that there's a $50,000 car to consider, which neither beats the $40,000 car in price or qualitative preference. But what really happened to you? Why was your decision between the first two options swayed when you were presented with a third option? And why did the car salesman show you a $50,000 car when he knew that it was more expensive and less desirable than the cars that you were considering? Well, the salesman was actually trying to use something called the decoy effect to influence your decision. You see, when trying to decide between two choices, the presentation of a third option, which is clearly inferior to one of the first two choices, makes the clearly superior options seem much more desirable, even though the first two options each had their own pros and cons. In this case, the $50,000 car was a decoy used to make a $40,000 car seem like it was the best option, even though the $50,000 car was never even in consideration to begin with. The decoy effect is used everywhere to sway consumers to buy things that are a little more expensive, but often seen as overall better deals. Some may think of it as a clever mind trick to get people to compare their choices to something that is completely irrelevant. But we'll just call it a cognitive bias that can screw up your day. If you'd like to see more videos on cognitive biases that can screw up your day, please make sure to like and subscribe. That's all for now.