Contrast misreaction tendency

Definition

Contrast misreaction tendency can be defined as: ”Making wrong conclusions from an obvious difference between two or more things.”

Your brain is a contrast-detection machine

Imagine yourself living 50,000 years ago. You are a hunter-gatherer and you search food in the jungle. Everything looks and feels normal until you notice some sudden movement on the tree close to you. At the moment this happens, all your efforts and attention go to recognizing the source of the movement. This time it is a harmless bird, but it could have been a poisonous snake or some bigger predator. Your brain is scanning contrasts in your environment. It hasn´t really changed in these 50,000 years. Sometimes contrast can lead you to wrong conclusions. Majority of decisions you make because you detect a contrast are right. And majority of these decisions are irrelevant.

Your nervous system doesn´t react to scientific units. Instead, it relies to something much simpler. It relies to differences that are noticed by your senses. You need to have a point of reference, when you are noticing the contrast. The difference between this point and the other point you compare it with is the contrast. The difference between point of reference and the compared point can be anything. You can find contrast between anything like numbers, items, sounds, colors, etc. Without significant difference, contrast is not established. The difference also shouldn´t be too big.

Contrast can be a good or a bad thing

You can use contrast to your advantage. When you need to use some item daily, you can increase its availability to you by putting it to place where the contrast between the item and its surroundings is noticeable. By increasing the contrast between the good things and their reference points, you can make good things more available. You can also put an unwanted item to a place in which there is no contrast between the item and its surroundings. You can also make things more valuable this way.

Deterioration to bad health can happen gradually. Weight can be gained slowly. Gaining few extra kilograms every year. After a decade you start to have problems with your health. Sometimes changes happen fast. For example, magician can put you on a pedestal that moves really slowly around. Then they can make some item disappear, because you haven´t noticed any contrast between the position in which you were when the movement started. Many salesmen use contrast into your disadvantage. For example, real estate brokers can show crappy houses on sale first and then proceed to the descent house. The latter house looks much better than it would look without showing the crappy ones. Anything can be made to look more valuable by doing this. Sometimes you do it to yourself without knowing it. It is hard to protect yourself from it even when you know in advance that contrast will exist.

Rejection then retreat technique is a combination of contrast misreaction and reciprocity

Rejection and retreat technique is simple. For example, a representative of a charitable organization first makes a request he is sure that you refuse to comply. Then he makes another much more reasonable request. The difference between these requests is big. For example, he asks a donation of 100$ first. After your refusal to this request he asks 5$. The probability of you complying gets much bigger than it would have without the first request. There is a fine line between a functioning difference and nonfunctioning difference. If the first request is too unreasonable this tactic backfires. The reason why this tactic will likely succeed is that a person who gets the first request feels responsible to reciprocate by complying to the second request after rejecting the first one. The second reason is that this person also feels like he was the person who had all the power.

How to avoid the effects on this tactic on us? Doing your homework before you go buying stuff and saying to the salesman that you are looking for a particular item could reduce the effect. There are no guarantee it works. You can also be the person who initiates communication by saying you are not interested without listening any requests. Sometimes these requests are so surprising that it is impossible to prepare for them.

And like with other biases, we have different ways of dealing with contrast. Some people have bigger probability of suffering more from contrast misreaction than others. What you should do is follow your behavior in different situations and make at least mental notes for how you behave.

Sources:

Influence, Robert Cialdini
Poor Charlie´s Almanack, Peter Kaufman

-TT