TED is a site where scholars talk about a single focus in their respective fields for roughly twenty minutes at a time.

This is another video by Dan Ariely. Here Ariely talks about the inevitability of making decisions. Most people believe that they make choices based on their cognitive ability, meaning they actively make decisions based on preference. However, Ariely's talk actually refutes this belief. Ariely, through the use of various studies seen in the video, proves that decisions are influenced by the potential choices. This seems obvious enough, however, Ariely goes on step further in showing that even choices that would never be chosen influence our decisions.

An example used in the video goes as follows: A man's face is placed near another man's face. Then a third face, a slightly distorted, and uglier version of the first man is placed in the line up. Most people would rate the first undistorted man's face as more attractive than his distorted clone, as well as more attractive than the other man. When the same two faces were placed in a line up, but this time with the other man's face distorted, the results showed that he was viewed as more attractive. This is incredibly interesting. When we make decisions we do not completely realize all of the factors that go into these decisions. In many ways we are not in control of our own behavior. In the beginning of his talk Ariely shows several optical illusions, which are designed so that humans view them in a specific, and incorrect way. Behavior works in much the same as an optical illusion. Something in everyday life triggers the way we act, and even if we know the effects of the things, our brain tells us to make the same decisions. This is similar to how we cannot un-see the effects of many optical illusions despite knowing their properties.

This realization is quite depressing. How much control do we have over our everyday decisions? Not very much it seems. However, this is not necessarily bad. If we can learn how people make decisions we can just as easily create scenarios in which they make decisions we want them to make. As in the case Ariely used with the faces, if the man had gone out to a club along with his distorted self, he would be more likely to be viewed more handsome by the opposite sex. So these human quirks are exploitable.