"I'm A Student Here Too" Read online In 1994¹, researchers asked 100s of college students for charitable donations. All were told to interrupt the students and solicit a donation. But there was a twist. Half were told to make a straightforward request, with no extra commentary. Half were told to emphasise a shared identity, saying "I'm a student here too". The results were astonishing. Only 9.8% of students in the control group made a donation. While 47.1% donated in the variant group, a 3x...

Placebos And Marketing Read online From December 2007 to January 2012, 146 men participated in an eye-opening study¹. All men had persistent knee pain. All had visited public hospitals in Finland and asked for help. Here's where the study started. Half underwent arthroscopic partial meniscectomy (removal of damaged meniscus tissue). That's the appropriate treatment. The other half underwent sham surgery (anaesthesia and incisions but no tissue removed). It was a placebo surgery. The sham...

The Veblen Effect Read online In 2008¹, researchers in California conducted brain scans on wine drinkers. They measured the area of the brain responsible for encoding pleasure. All participants were given an identical glass of wine. However, some were told the wine cost $10. Others were told the wine costs $90. When the participants believed they were drinking an expensive wine, they experienced more pleasure. Taken from the 2008 paper¹ But no one actually drinks wine in a brain scanner. So,...