Firstly I am not going to try to convince my dear-to-my-heart readers to read anything other than my blog. I did, however, just plow through a fantastic read. The title does all the work for me: Sway-- The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and his brother Rom. Isn’t that just darling, sibling novelists?
Anyway, true to my promise I will now shift focus to one little example it the novel that is particularly fascinating. It highlights how puzzling our perspective shifts can be. In Sway a main point demonstrated is that once we attribute a specific value to a person or thing it dramatically alters our perceptions of all subsequent incoming information. Enter in a clever experiment run by economists offered SoBe Adrenaline Rush ( a drink claiming to give you more of a jolt than traditional java plus those wings your red bull offers).
Here is how the experiment went: Group 1 was given a word jumble to complete without getting any fun upper drink. Group 2 received a speech sitting all the positives of SoBe then given a few sips and told that it was very expensive; they then took the same word jumble. Group 3 was told SoBe was a cheap drink meant to improve mental dexterity and then took the word jumble.
The results: the group that thought SoBe was expensive and fancy preformed slightly better than the control group. Hmmm..now the real shock the group that was told SoBe was cheap preformed worse than the control group. Moral? Don’t buy cheap coffee during finals? Maybe. According to the psychologists when we receive something at a discount our positive expectations don’t kick in as strongly. So we are all under the powerful influence of our perceptions. So be it.
