An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity - always yours

188 COGNITIVE BIASES
• Subjects who are told that a wine is expensive are likely to find it more pleasant.
They often like it better than an identical wine that is labeled as cheaper!
• The purported origin of a wine affects not just its perceived quality but also
the perceived quality of the food served with the wine. In one study, two
groups of restaurant customers were given the same free wine. One group
was told that the wine was from South Dakota. The other group was told
that it was from California, which is more famous for wine. As expected, the
California group rated the wine higher. But these customers also liked the
food better, ate 11% more food, and were more likely to come back again.
• People judge instructions to be easier to follow when they are printed using
a font easier on the eyes. In one study, subjects estimated it would take 8
minutes to complete a set of exercise instructions printed using an easy-toread
Arial font. But those in another group who read the same instructions
in a difficult-to-read font thought it would take a full 15 minutes (Song and
Schwarz, 2008).
• Many studies link the pronunciation of names to risk assessment. When
subjects were given completely fictitious names of food additives, those that
were easier to pronounce (magnalroxate) were regarded as less harmful than
ones which are harder to pronounce (hnegripitrom). Meanwhile, amusement
park rides with names that are difficult to pronounce (tsiischili) were
considered to be more exciting and sickness inducing than rides with easyto-pronounce
names (chunta). These results are obviously relevant to marketing
and advertising.
• The use of agent metaphors affect how people predict the stock market. If
the stock market is described using words that apply to living things rather
than inanimate objects, people expect the stock market to follow the trend
suggested by those words. So if a stock is said to have "jumped," "fought its
way upward," or "climbed up," people are more likely to think it will continue
to move up. In contrast, merely saying that the stock has "increased"
has no such effect (Morris et al., 2007). Researchers speculate that we interpret
actions indicating future intentions and behavior. Whatever the underlying
explanation might be, this clearly is a pitfall we should avoid in making
financial decisions.
20.2.2 Framing
The framing effect is a well-established cognitive bias. It is about how the formulation
of a problem (frame) can affect decision making. 1 In particular, people
value avoiding losses over acquiring gains, so much so that we might feel differently
about the same choice depending on whether it is described in terms of loss
Sometimes the notion of a frame also includes the set of implicit assumptions people use in approaching
the problem.