What I’ve Learned from Rory Sutherland’s View on Ellsberg Paradox

It just blew my mind like wow..

Today we live in a world full of choices, every door that we’re about to take seems to be making sense for us, at that moment, until it doesn’t.

Capitalist world leads to high-tech improvement. Digital advancement also bombarded us with ever-growing world full of ads. All of these phenomenas lead us to shorten our attention span, this leads to our performance in decision-making. We think that all of our decision are made from well calculated reasoning, but actually, deep down it’s our real emotion that is in the driving seat, we just intuitively think that we are making rational judgement.

Ellsberg paradox is a phenomena that describes choices with an underlying level of risk are often favoured in instances where the likelihood of risk is clear, rather than instances in which the likelihood of risk is unknown.

Seeing this psychological phenomena, marketers and problem-solvers often turn to measurable solutions everytime they are face with problems. Well this actually works for calculated problems like building a bridge, a plane or manipulating atomic particles. But, some problems actually break down when face with calculated solutions. Some problems are often well solved with psychological approachment, like appealing to the human emotions rather than his/her rational thought.

For example, trying to rush things too quickly for the sake of time-saving actually debilitate the effectiveness of that things. Instead, if you can just switch your focus to the emotional aspect, sometimes that could satisfy the consumers just well enough.