Dan Ariely's TED Talk

Intuition leads to misinterpretation even though its right, in visional illusions its easy to see the mistake, but in cognitive illusions its harder to distinguish. In cognitive situations we feel that we decide our own decisions, but in reality the people who design the form enable your decisions. We simply have an illusion that we make a decision. One example is by adding a third option thats not as attractive to make the other options look better. The options were all inclusive Paris, all inclusive Rome and Rome without coffee. Rome with coffee is superior to Rome without coffee, so people are more willing to buy Rome with coffee because the option includes more like "a better deal." Another example is two have two people attractive Tom attractive Jerry and unattractive Jerry, when this happened viewers were more likely to pick attractive Jerry. But when it was attractive Tom, attractive Jerry, and unattractive Tom viewers were more likely to pick attractive Tom. If I were to repeat that experiment I would create two options for donating money and if I add a third that wasn't a good cause, the people willing to donate would donate more to the good cause. Its interesting how stores, businesses and retailers use this tactic to get individuals to buy their products by having comparable products.