Richard Shotton: The Choice Factory

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I read Richard Shotton’s book The Choice Factory back in February after winning a copy through Neil Perkin’s newsletter, Only Dead Fish. Here’s a summary of the 25 behavioural biases that the book covers.

Bias 01 - The Fundamental Attribution Error: We overvalue personality and undervalue context when analysing behaviour.

Bias 02 - Social Proof: We are more likely to adopt a certain behaviour when we know others have already adopted it.

Bias 03 - Negative Social Proof: We feel less bad for doing something wrong, when we know lots of other people already do it.

Bias 04 - Distinctiveness: When exposed to a range of similar stimuli, we are likely to remember that which is most different.

Bias 05 - Habit: We are more open to making a small change after we have undergone a big one.

Bias 06 - The Pain of Payment: We feel more pain when paying by cash than we do when paying by card.

Bias 07 - The Danger of Claimed Data: How we say we act is rarely the same as how we actually act.

Bias 08 - Mood: We are more receptive and more likely to remember adverts when we view them whilst in a relaxed or positive mood.

Bias 09 - Price Relativity: We don’t evaluate prices in isolation, we evaluate them in comparison to other prices.

Bias 10 - Primacy Effect: We recall information presented at the start of a list better than that presented at the middle or end.

Bias 11 - Expectancy Theory: Our experience of an event is shaped by the expectations we have of it.

Bias 12 - Confirmation Bias: We overvalue information that proves our existing beliefs and undervalue that which contradicts them.

Bias 13 - Overconfidence: We tend to be more confident in our abilities than is objectively justified.

Bias 14 - Wishful Seeing: We do not perceive an objective reality, we see a version of reality that is influenced by our own preferences.

Bias 15 - Media Context: The media in which an advert is carried exerts an influence over the interpretation of the advert.

Bias 16 - The Curse of Knowledge: We find it difficult to imagine what it’s like to not know something.

Bias 17 - Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Bias 18 - The Pratfall Effect: We find people more appealing when they make a mistake or exhibit an imperfection.

Bias 19 - Winners’ Curse: The winning bid in an auction tends to exceed the intrinsic value of the item that has been purchased.

Bias 20 - The Power of the Group: We experience stronger emotional responses to adverts when we are part of a group than we do when we view them as individuals.

Bias 21 - Veblen Goods: In certain categories, we perceive higher priced products to be more effective and/or more desirable.

Bias 22 - The Replicability Crisis: Depending on the statistical measure used, only 36% to 47% of psychological studies are successfully replicated.

Bias 23 - Variability: Tactics that employ behavioural economics will affect different groups of people in different ways.

Bias 24 - Cocktail Party Effect: We elevate sensory inputs to conscious processing based on, among other things, their personal relevance.

Bias 25 - Scarcity: We perceive goods to be of a greater value when they are in limited supply.

The Choice Factory gives much more information on the biases, the evidence behind them and, most importantly, their implications on advertising.

I highly recommend reading the book in its entirety.

Get your copy here.