[grandalf]

I appreciate your boisterous rejoinder to my comment.

I think you are mistaken in your understanding of rationality. Emotion is part of rationality, not separate from it. To make a rational decision, a rational person ought to consider his/her emotional response as input to the decision function, not throw it away.

Also, different individuals have different utility functions, and not all are practical, far-looking, mature, or wise.

Your view of humanity seems rather grim if you think that people are so easily misled by advertising. While dishonest claims in ads are a bad thing, those fall under the category of "dishonesty" and not "advertising". An ad touting an inaccurate gas mileage for a car is no more abhorrent than a window sticker or owner's manual stating inaccurate gas mileage figures, and of course laws exist to discourage companies from engaging in either practice.

If anything, advertising omits negative facts about a product or service. But in a competitive marketplace firms have an incentive to publicize negative aspects of competing products (note the Velveeta ad claiming "Cheddar's lumpy, cheddar's oily..."). So the complaint about ommitted negatives is actually a complaint about an insufficiently competitive marketplace.

[jshen]

Check the study below, and think about the implications.

"Anchoring Bias: Phone Numbers Used as Anchors When Estimating the Prices of Goods"

[grandalf]

By that logic, you may have been duped into liking that article b/c the last word in its title is a variation of the word "good".

While those sorts of biases are interesting, the impact on human rationality of such techniques (used intentionally or by accident) is probably a wash. I'd be curious if there's a study that shows otherwise -- such as that people with certain phone numbers are more likely to declare bankruptcy.