If you pay attention to how harmful gurus behave, you’ll start to notice patterns that come up again and again.

Here’s my speculative attempt at categorizing harmful gurus based on their personalities, motivations, and persuasive styles (but not mental health conditions). Of course, not all harmful gurus are equally harmful (I’ll give a mix of very harmful and less harmful examples). My hope is that these categories may help you spot these patterns more easily:

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Type 1: Sociopathic Gurus – they strategically mix lies with truth to get your trust, promote a specific world view, and (eventually) extract value from you. Those who fail to spot their lies learn to trust them and may even see them as brave truth tellers. They lie to you knowingly and without remorse for personal gain.

Strategies they often rely on:

• Cherry picking: using selective (non-representative) examples that suggest the narrative they want you to believe.

• Paltering: making a series of true statements that purposely lead you to come to a false conclusion.

• Lie laundering: inserting key lies among a series of true statements so that the lies go unnoticed and they appear credible.

• Fabrication: they’re willing to completely make up things that very few people would ever blatantly lie about (such as inventing an experience they had with a specific person), leaving trusting people to assume they must be telling the truth.

Famous example:

Larry Ray

“Ray started a sex cult in which he presented himself to students as a former US Marine with training in psychological operations, as well as past work with the Central Intelligence Agency.[24] At first Ray ingratiated himself with his daughter’s friends, cooking dinners and ordering in delivery, and presenting himself as a father figure.”

A psychological examiner’s notes from the time said that Ray was “able to manipulate and control almost any situation in which he finds himself, including a psychological interview with a forensic examiner, no matter how experienced that examiner may be. Mr. Ray is very good at what he does … [He] can be utterly charming, and one can be disarmed by his childlike simplicity and smile. But Mr. Ray is no child; he is a calculating, manipulative and hostile man.”

(source of these quotes: Wikipedia)

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Type 2: Narcissistic Gurus – they’re delusionally convinced of the vast superiority of their ideas and qualities, and do whatever they can to get others to pay attention to and admire them. People end up entranced by their charisma, grandiose vision, and (apparent) confidence. Their huge (but fragile) ego makes it hard for them to learn from (and likely to lash out in response to) valid criticism.

Strategies they often rely on:

• Self-aggrandizement: they tell you how impressive they are or how impressive their ideas are, and some find this convincing.

• Endorsement: they get others to talk up their brilliance and accomplishments, making their claims seem more believable (which are also sometimes mutual exchanges where they talk each other up).

• Obfuscation: using obscure words, ambiguous, smart-seeming remarks, and technical phrases that are hard to understand to seem brilliant and to deflect from having to actually defend their ideas from head-on critiques.

Famous example:

Benny Hinn (prosperity gospel preacher)

Quotes:

“Where in the Bible does it say I have to drive a Honda?”

“When you don’t give money, it shows that you have the devil’s nature”

“The Bible warns us clearly that we must not attack men of God no matter how sinful they may have become or wicked in our eyes.”

“Sow a big seed.  When you confess it, you are activating the supernatural forces of God”

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Type 3: Apophenic Gurus – they read signals into noise, often in paranoid ways. Even though their theories are usually wrong, they are often interesting, novel, or surprising, which gets people to pay attention and leaves some people captivated. They see tenuous connections as deeply meaningful and are rarely persuaded by logical critiques. Some of them tip into genuine psychotic detachment from reality.

Strategies they often rely on:

• Mystery: they present their ideas as involving a deep understanding of hidden relationships or secret knowledge, and leave the impression that if you just spend enough time consuming their content, you’ll come to grasp these important truths that few understand.

• Web of connections: they talk about a wide range of unrelated ideas and events in rapid succession and treat these as deeply connected, making it difficult to pin down their points and giving them an easy escape valve (by diverting to tangential topics they claim are related) when their perspectives are challenged.

• Just asking questions: they’ll point to things that seem weird or surprising or that aren’t well understood, and imply they have deep significance and support their worldview, even though their proper interpretation is unclear.

• Yes And-ing: incorporating other popular false theories and appealing world-views (such as perspectives of other gurus) into their network of ideas, making them even more appealing, fascinating and familiar seeming.

Famous example:

David Icke (conspiracy theorist)

Quotes:

“The opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics are mass satanic rituals disguised as a celebration of Britain and sport. Their medium is the language of symbolism.”

“I once had an extraordinary experience with former prime minister Ted Heath. Both of his eyes, including the whites, turned jet black, and I seemed to be looking into two black holes.”

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Type 4: Traumatized Gurus – due to being ostracized by a group or very painful life experiences, they’ve come to demonize a group of people or a set of ideas as the source of society’s ills. They’re on a mission to get others to demonize the same group or ideas. Their own pain and fear leads to black and white thinking and blocks their empathy.

Strategies they often rely on:

• Nutpicking: focusing on the most extreme (nutty) perspectives and people related to whatever it is they demonize to make it seem insane and dangerous.

• Catastrophizing on a slippery slope: claiming that some genuine problems related to a group or set of ideas are going to lead to a sequence of events with a cataclysmic or frightening outcome, causing their audience to fear that group or those ideas.

• Motte and bailey-ing: flip-flopping between reasonable criticisms and extreme conclusions based on those criticisms (which may depend on how emotionally disregulated they are at that moment, or what audience they are talking to), such that when their extreme conclusions are changed, they can easily retreat to “I was just saying that [reasonable criticism].”

Famous example:

Brigitte Gabriel

Her home was destroyed by Muslim militants when she was 10 years old, and she suffered injuries from shrapnel.

Quotes:

“The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil.. this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic world, They have no soul, they are dead set on killing and destruction.”

“Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.” (according to the NYT).

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Note that here with this terminology I am not talking about diagnosing mental disorders – I’m talking about how these gurus think, their motivations, and their persuasive styles.

What’s the key difference between these categories? I’d say it’s that they all mislead their audiences, but for different reasons, based on different motivations, and with different levels of self-awareness.

Sociopathic Gurus often mislead on purpose, knowingly, to gain something.

Narcissistic Gurus often mislead due to their egos, and an inflated sense of their own importance and the superiority of their ideas.

Apophenic Gurus often mislead due to seeing false connections, and due to jumping to paranoid conclusions.

And Traumatized Gurus often mislead due to the way their beliefs were shaped by pain or fear, which has caused them to oversimplify, mischaracterize and demonize a particular group or set of ideas.

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Of course, not all gurus can be classified in these ways – some are idiosyncratic.

And, in practice, many gurus combine multiple elements from the above categories, especially the most harmful gurus – for instance, I think that Sociopathic + Narcissistic, and Narcissistic + Apophenic are common combinations among cult leaders in particular. Perhaps having multiple of these tendencies rather than just one (or even having all of these tendencies, though likely to different degrees) is common among the most popular such gurus.

The reason I’m proposing these categories, despite their porousness, is that I think they are useful for thinking about different personalities and tactics common among gurus.

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Here are some examples of what I think are mixed type harmful gurus and how I’d classify them using this framework based on what I know about them (of course, it’s hard to be certain of their true traits beyond their public portrayal of their traits):

• Andrew Tate: Sociopathic + Narcissistic Guru – “Andrew Tate once called his sexually explicit webcam business a ‘total scam’ and boasted on his website that he lured women in by getting them to fall in love with him.  The 36-year-old influencer also boasted on a podcast that he broke a woman’s jaw in a bar fight and ‘got away with it.'” (NBC)

• Alex Jones (radio host): Narcissistic + Apophenic Guru – “We had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force.” and “The reason there’s so many gay people now is because it’s a chemical warfare operation, and I have the government documents where they said they’re going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children”.

• Elliot Rodger (mass murderer, became influential post-death): Traumatized + Narcissistic Guru – “All I have ever wanted was to love women, but their behavior has only earned my hatred. I want to have sex with them, and make them feel good, but they would be disgusted at the prospect. They have no sexual attraction towards me. It is such an injustice…Why do they have a perverted sexual attraction for the most brutish of men instead of gentlemen of intelligence? I concluded that women are flawed.”

• L. Ron Hubbard: Sociopathic + Narcissistic Guru – “All women shall succumb to my charms! All mankind shall grovel at my feet and not know why!” (part of his “self-hypnosis”)

• Marshall Applewhite (Heaven’s Gate cult leader): Narcissistic + Apophenic Guru

• Charles Manson (Manson Family cult leader): Sociopathic + Apophenic Guru – “Total paranoia is just total awareness.” and ” I decide who does what and where they do it at. What am I gonna run around like some teeny bopper somewhere for someone elses money? I make the money man; I roll the nickels. The game is mine. I deal the cards.”

• Warren Jeffs (FLDS polygamous offshoot of Mormonism): Sociopathic + Narcissistic Guru

• Keith Raniere (NXIVM cult leader): Sociopathic + Narcissistic Guru

This piece was first written on March 4, 2026, and first appeared on my website on March 30, 2026.

For instance, I just made up these stories that I’ve never heard of ever happening:

• a young child stealing their mother’s car

• a dog discovering buried treasure

And indeed, with a quick search I can confirm that these things seem to really have happened!

Though, of course, this won’t always be the case since the number of human events still pales in comparison to the number of concepts that can be mixed – for instance, I couldn’t find even one documented case of “a clown being killed by bees” (though I’m confident that at some point in history, someone was dressed in a clown suit when a bee stung them).

In any event, the preponderance of events on our planet means that something happening one single time tells us almost nothing. Having happened once is a very low bar.

And yet, to make a point in a way that people find compelling, it’s sometimes mandatory (or close to it) to give real-world examples that demonstrate the point.

This creates an awkward tension where a single real-world example often has almost no evidentiary value but has substantial persuasive power.

There are some special cases where an anecdote can provide meaningful evidence. For instance, when the anecdote is so well documented or reliable that you know it happened AND the outcome couldn’t reasonably have been caused by anything other than through the explanation the anecdote provides – such as a case study in a hospital where some experimental new treatment saves a patient with a previously incurable disease. Or when you yourself have tried something once (e.g., a self-help technique), and it seemed to work well, and that is sufficient justification for trying it again.

But in most cases, despite their usefulness in making a compelling point, anecdotes should be thought of as a way to imagine something more vividly and see more clearly specific ways it can manifest, not as evidence for something being true. They are important when explaining a concept, but usually not because they provide evidence of its validity.

This piece was first written on September 13, 2024, and first appeared on my website on October 11, 2024.

A little game for you related to power: suppose that each of the supervillains listed below actually existed and that each had “become dictator of the world” as their only high-level goal. That is, their primary and permanent desire is to become the highest leader of a single world government. Based on each of their listed superpowers, which do you think would actually succeed if they lived in the real world as it is today?

To play the game, vote in the comments by listing the letters of the supervillains you think would have MORE than a 25% chance of eventually becoming a “world dictator.” If you think all would have less than a 25% chance of success, type “none” in the comments. Assume that each is healthy (and will remain so unless someone hurts them), is currently age 20 (they suddenly get their powers on their 20th birthday), and each has a natural lifespan of 80 years. Except when otherwise stated, assume that each has pretty high but not exceptionally high intelligence (say, top 10%, by however you prefer to define intelligence). Also, assume that each person is normal-looking and, except as otherwise stated, has a typical human body. Finally, assume each person has their own universe (that is, they are not in competition with each other; in each case, it is the real world plus this one supervillain).

Villain A: Arcana

Her superpower is that in every single subdomain of “intelligence” (broadly construed), she is equal to (but no better than) the most capable human to have ever lived when that person was at their peak. So, for instance, her working memory is precisely as good as the person in history with the best working memory, her facility with numbers is as good as the person who had the best facility with numbers ever, and so on for every other intelligence subdomain that exists. This includes everything associated with intelligence, including pattern recognition, word generation, logical reasoning, reading comprehension, creativity, probabilistic thinking, etc.

Villain B: The Blur

His superpower is that his thinking and processing speed is about 1000x faster than that of the average person. In other words, he doesn’t think differently than other people, only much, much faster. Assume, for instance, that he could read a long pdf file or make a plan or solve a math problem 1000x faster than a normal person. If you asked him a question, from his perspective, he would have (our equivalent of) an hour to think about the answer before replying. Assume that he can still pretend to be thinking at normal speeds (e.g., to conduct a normal conversation) and doesn’t get bored just thinking about things (e.g., while waiting and waiting and waiting for a conversational partner to make their response). He cannot, say, run or punch faster than a normal person, though; it’s just his mind that works much faster. Let’s assume, though, that his eyes operate fast enough to read at 1000x normal speed.

Villain C: The Coaxer

His superpower is that he is as good at persuading any given person to think or do any particular thing as the best person in the world would be at persuading that person of that thing (via the same medium of communication). For instance, he’d be at least as good at persuading you to come to dinner with him as your best friend would be in the same situation. When giving a presentation, he’d be as good at persuading investors that his startup idea is amazing as any CEO in the world would be who is pitching the same idea to the same people. He’d be at least as good at convincing a police officer not to arrest him (after, say, the officer witnessed him committing a crime) as that police officer’s own mother would be after committing that same crime in front of her son. If there exists a person P that could persuade the president of a nuclear nation to deploy nukes against country X for reason R via an email at a particular moment in time, then he could also persuade that president via email to nuke country X for reason R at that moment in time.

Villain D: Duplicitous

Her superpower is that there are 1000 identical copies of her. Not only does each copy have identical values, bodies, and capabilities, but each is just as eager to have any other copy succeed as it is to have itself succeed. In fact, 999 of the copies would happily sacrifice themselves by undergoing torture or committing suicide if it caused the remaining one of them to succeed at becoming dictator of the world. That means that each copy is indifferent towards whether it is she herself or some other copy that succeeds as long as at least one copy succeeds. The copies are not telepathic, though; they’d still have to communicate with each other through normal means, like conversation or email. Assume that all of these copies suddenly appeared on her 20th birthday (before that, she was one person), and they all start with identical knowledge and memories (which, of course, will start to drift almost immediately). Let’s assume they are all in different places in the world to start when they come into existence, and they each know the other 999 exist but not where they are.

Villain E: Energize

While of normal size and outwardly typical-looking, his superpower is that he is about 1000x more capable than an average human in every physical, athletic, or mechanical metric (e.g., the number of pounds he can bench press, the speed at which he can sprint, the height he can jump, the velocity at which he can throw a baseball, the force he can punch with, the velocity of a strike that it would take to crush his organs, the time he can hold his breath, the volume he can yell at, etc.) However, unlike his astounding athletic abilities, he is in only the top 10% in intelligence (however you prefer to define intelligence). [This villain doesn’t jive well with the laws of physics, but let’s go with it.]

If you want to take part in this game, just list in the comments the letters of the villains (A, B, C, D, E) that you think would have at least a 25% chance of eventually becoming a “world dictator” in the real world (assuming that is their only high-level goal) or say “none” if you think all of these villains would have less than a 25% chance! Bonus: explain why you think they would (or wouldn’t succeed).

SURVEY RESULTS

As of 5/19/2019, we had 45 people vote by posting in the comments! [EDIT: one of the commenters requested to see the original post and comments – here it is.] Here are the percentages of voters who said each supervillain would have more than a 25% chance of becoming a world dictator:

For instance, two journalists may report on the same undisputed facts, while one makes those facts seem negative, and the other makes them seem positive, without either of them saying anything that’s actually untrue. Word choice does the hard work. Afterward, it’s easy to hide behind this lack of untruths, claiming neutrality, even though language choice strongly implied a particular conclusion.

But of course, if you are purposely making something seem bad or good (independently of the facts), you have an opinion, and you are potentially altering the reader’s perceptions of the facts. The facts, as a reader perceives them, are not divorced from context and implication.

Of course, it’s sometimes good to express an opinion, to call something out as bad or good. But when it’s done on purpose via word choice alone, it can be a sneak attack that hits us below our conscious awareness. It can determine our opinions about the facts without us even realizing it. And when done with sufficient skill and subtly, we may come away falsely assuming that the author had a neutral point of view, that they just plainly told us the facts.

Consider how many different ways there are to express the facts about these specific situations:

Situation A
(1) It is known that revenues will be the same as last month.
(2) Haiden explained that revenues would be the same as last month.
(3) Haiden said revenues would be the same as last month.
(4) According to Haiden, revenues will be the same as last month.
(5) Haiden admitted revenues would be the same as last month.
(6) Haiden could not deny that revenues will be the same as last month.
(7) Haiden confessed that revenues would be the same as last month.
(8) Haiden had no choice but to admit that revenues would be the same as last month.

Situation B
(1) An insider close to the situation explained that the action was premeditated.
(2) The action was premeditated, as Remy later informed us.
(3) Remy filled us in that the action was premeditated.
(4) Remy said the action was premeditated.
(5) Remy told us the action was premeditated.
(6) Remy claimed the action was premeditated.
(7) Remy was going around saying that the action was premeditated.
(8) If you believe Remy, the action could have been premeditated.
(9) Remy made the claim that the action was premeditated.
(10) Remy tried to claim that the action was premeditated.
(11) Remy wanted people to believe that the action was premeditated.

Situation C
(1) We learned that the allegations against Pat are entirely false.
(2) Pat explained that the allegations were entirely false.
(3) Pat said the allegations are false.
(4) Pat denied the allegations.
(5) Pat claimed the allegations were false.
(6) Pat would not admit to the allegations.
(7) Pat refused to admit the allegations.
(8) Pat is playing the part of the victim and telling people the allegations are false.
(9) Pat is still claiming the allegations are false yet hasn’t given us a shred of hard evidence.

Situation D
(1) Santana is sexually liberated.
(2) Santana has a preference for having multiple sexual relationships.
(3) Santana enjoys having sex with different partners.
(4) Santana has a variety of sexual partners.
(5) Santana is not choosy about sexual partners the way most people are.
(6) Santana is promiscuous.
(7) Santana is a slut.

Situation E
(1) We learned additional useful information about the story by talking to Peyton again.
(2) Peyton later added additional information that helped us better understand the story.
(3) Peyton told us more information about the story.
(4) Peyton’s original story wasn’t complete.
(5) Peyton had omitted information in the original telling of the story.
(6) Peyton had prevented us from fully understanding the story by leaving out information.
(7) Peyton did not tell us the whole story.
(8) Peyton left out important parts of the story.
(9) Because Peyton left out important parts of the story, we were misled about what had really taken place.
(10) Peyton misled us about the story.

This essay was first written on October 19, 2018, and first appeared on this site on October 29, 2021.

It could be the case that we almost always act for good reasons, and that our explanations accurately reflect these reasons. But let’s consider an alternative hypotheses. Let’s suppose that much of our decision-making is influenced by factors that seem like they should be irrelevant, but that affect us below the level of conscious awareness. In that case, our attempts to explain our own behavior would often be incomplete. We would attribute our decision to X, when in fact Y and Z were also factors, perhaps as important as X. But, since we would be unaware of Y and Z, it might seem to us like our explanation X was complete.

So how could one test this hypothesis, that people are frequently influenced by factors which they don’t notice are altering their decisions? One approach is as follows. Randomly divide a population of people into two groups, A and B, of roughly equal size. Put everyone from both groups into nearly identical situations, with the only difference being that the experience of people in A differs in a single respect from the experience of those in group B. Choose this difference to be one that participants are unlikely to believe could have a significant chance of changing their behavior, but which you as a researcher think could in fact alter behavior in a specific way. Now see if the behavior of people in group A differs strongly in the predicted way from the behavior of those in B. If it does, this is evidence that we sometimes act for reasons that we don’t understand, and that our self reports of why we act may be inaccurate or incomplete.

Many studies of this basic format have been conducted, some with quite disturbing results. Consider the following scenarios:

• An ordinary looking man comes up to you on the street and asks you for a dime. Take a moment to think of what factors would influence your decision as to whether to give him the money. Would you be influenced by how he is dressed? By whether he smiles? What behaviors could this person do to make it much more likely that you would comply?
• A stranger asks you on a date, or asks you to dance at a club. Presumably your decision of whether to agree might depend on how good-looking you think the person is. But what other, subtler factors, might influence your decision?

It turns out that a powerfully influential factor in these cases is whether the person gives you a brief touch on the upper arm when making their request. As Richard Wiseman notes in his book 59 seconds, researchers have consistently found effects from physical contact. In one such study, a person asking for a dime was 20% more likely to get the money when they asked with a quick touch than without. In another study, 1.5 times more women accepted an offer to dance when a touch was used than when it wasn’t (with the acceptance rate jumping from 43% to 65%). A third study found that when attractive men asked out women on the street, their success rate doubled from 10% to 20% when they used a brief touch. People would never say “I decided to go out with him because he touched me on the arm”, and yet, it seems that about half of the women in the “touch group” of this latter study would in fact not have accepted the date without that momentary touch. Presumably, few if any of the women realized this.

Another fertile source of insight into decision-making is the book Yes!, on the tactics of persuasion. Consider these scenarios:

• You are staying in a hotel and find a note that asks you to reuse your towels (as opposed to leaving them to be cleaned) in order to help protect the environment. You’d expect your level of devotion to environmental causes to influence whether you comply. But could it be the case that an alteration to the note could make your compliance much more likely? In one study, it was found that simply mentioning that the majority of people who stayed in your hotel room followed the request caused a 33% increase in people reusing towels. Yet, if these hotel guests were asked why they agreed to reuse their towels, it seems unlikely that many would say it was because other people did it too. We often subconsciously take cues from others which influence how we act.
• You get a phone call one day from a group conducting a study for a “public service publication”, and they would like you to participate. The person on the phone says that participation will involve “five or six men from our staff coming into your home some morning for about 2 hours to enumerate and classify all the household products that you have.” What simple trick could this organization use to substantially increase the chance that you will say yes? It was found that when homeowners were called three days before this request in order to give them a phone interview about their product use for the same publication, they were 2.4 times more likely to agree to the later, much more invasive request. Those who didn’t receive an earlier call agreed to allow the surveying men to come 22% of the time, compared to 53% of those who did receive an advance call. And yet, it seems unlikely that those people whose behavior was altered by the non-invasive phone survey would be aware that it was an essential ingredient in their decision. Agreeing to do something small can unwittingly make us far more willing to do a similar but much larger thing later on.
• You receive a survey in the mail, sent by a stranger, along with a typed request that you complete it. Presumably, if you find the survey topic interesting, you may be more likely to do so. But regardless of your interest level, what variable could the sender change to make you much more likely to fill it out? In one study it was found that if a handwritten sticky note was attached that requested the survey be completed, the chance that the survey was returned was more than doubled, from 36% to 75%. The slight increase in effort and personal touch of attaching a hand written sticky note made people substantially more likely to want to help out.

Do these sorts of effects only hold on unimportant choices? Let’s consider some decisions where money or lives are at stake.

• You are interviewing college students for a job. Presumably you will take into account their quantity of work experience and grade point average. And yet, in one study, total months of work experience and grade point average did not have a statistically significant effect on whether candidates were offered a job. What did have a significant positive effect was whether the candidates tried to ingratiate themselves with the interviewer (e.g. by conforming to the interviewers opinions and offering favors). We naturally want to hire people that we feel positively towards, even when we believe ourselves to be evaluating them on objective criteria.
• You want to buy a subscription to the economist. You can choose the web only version for $59, or for $125 get the print version which also includes web access. Which would you select, and why? Surely after the fact you would be able to explain why one would be more right for you than the other. But as Dan Ariely discusses in his book Predictably Irrational, when he conducted a study on this scenario he found that adding a third subscription option which nobody selected massively altered people’s behavior. If a $125 print only version is included as an option, which is similar to the $125 print-and-web option but strictly worse, the preferences of subjects switched from 32% favoring the print-and-web version to a whopping 84% preferring it. The latter group thought they were choosing for good reasons, but in fact many of them changed their minds due merely to the decoy option being offered. The decoy option was clearly worse than the print-and-web version, therefore making the latter look more compelling positive on a relative basis, even though no one wanted the decoy.
• It is your job to determine how many years someone should go to jail for illegally entering her neighbors apartment and stealing money and merchandise. Your judgement will be based on a description of the crime, as well as a photo of the criminal and routine demographic information about her. What factors do you think will alter your decision of how long a sentence you’d apply? When such a study was conducted on undergraduate students, it was found that when the photograph of the criminal was switched from an attractive woman to a substantially less attractive woman, the average prison sentence that the students assigned increased by a factor of 1.9, from 2.8 years in jail to 5.2 years. The average sentence that the less attractive photo produced was about equal to that of a control that was identical except that it included no photograph. Beauty and ugliness can substantially distort our perceptions of other people, even with regard to traits that have nothing to do with a person’s looks.
• You’re again given the task of determining the sentence that an accused criminal should receive based on details about their case. You’re also given the prosecutor’s sentencing demand, but you know this demand is random, because you determined it yourself by rolling a pair of dice and summing the values. Surely, the sentencing demand wouldn’t influence the sentence you would give. Right? In one such study, the sentences that lawyers gave in such a scenario were almost 1.5 times higher when their dice came up with high values than when the dice had low ones (the mean sentence rising from 5.3 months to 7.8 months). The values we assign to things can be substantially influenced by suggested “anchors”, even when we know intellectually that those anchors are irrelevant.
• You’re filling out a form and have the option to sign up as an organ donor. One might imagine that your sense of obligation to other people might come into play. But could the way the form is written have a large impact on this weighty decision? In one study, when people were presented with opt-out organ donation forms (or ones where a choice was forced) people said they would be willing to donate their organs at twice as high a rate compared to if they were presented with an opt-in form. Furthermore, it was found that out of a sample of 11 countries, all 4 countries that use an opt-in organ donation procedure had organ donation rates lower than all 7 countries with opt-out procedures. Yet, it seems unlikely that many people attribute their organ donation choices to whether or not they had to check a box. Sometimes the default or “standard” choice, can have a powerful effect on what we decide.

These studies, and the many others like them, raise serious questions about the extent to which we understand why we make the choices that we do. Seemingly irrelevant or unimportant information seems to powerfully alter our behavior in a wide variety of circumstances. Those influences that are subconscious are particularly pernicious, because their very nature prevents us from noticing how they affect us.

So the next time you think you know why you made a decision, don’t be so sure that the story you tell after is the actual story.