Executive Summary on Dan Ariely's Famous Ted Talk

This may sound like a stupid question - are we always in control of our own decisions? Of course, majority of people will say yes. However, in one of his TED talks, behavioral economist Dan Ariely turned this belief on its head. He talked about some real-life examples that show: we are not always in control of our own decisions.

Dan Ariely started his talk with examples of some classic visual illusions. He then said that we should use these as a metaphor. We have a huge part of our brain dedicated to vision - bigger than dedicated to anything else. We do more vision, more hours of the day, than we do anything else. If we make predictable repeatable mistakes in our vision, which we are so good at, then chances are high that we make all sorts of mistakes when it comes to things, we are not so good at, such as financial decision-making.

Ariely then moved on to sharing some examples of cognitive illusions or decision-making illusions. The first example was based on a statistical chart of some European countries which basically shows the percentage of people who are interested in donating their organs after death. From the chart we can see that - although UK and France have very similar culture and religious beliefs, but they are on the opposite sides of the organ donation chart. UK has only 17% people interested in organ donation whereas, in France organ donation participation rate is nearly 100%. The actual underlying reason of this opposite behavior is difference in check-box that appears on the DMV forms. In the UK form, the check-box reads - 'check this box if you want to be an organ donor'. The French form also has a similar check-box but that reads - 'check this box if you do not want to be an organ donor'. In both countries, majority of people just don’t put tick on the check box. However, in the UK this means they are not donating their organs but in France it means they are. What this example shows is that, the person who actually designed the form had a huge influence on people’s decision making process. Sometimes decision making is so complex that we do not know what to do. As a result, we just pick the default -