Stereotyping
An agency casts a gray-haired man in a lab coat for a medicine ad. The Glitch they’re banking on: you’ll judge credibility by how well he matches your mental picture of this.
What is a doctor (the stereotype/mental picture)?
$1,999 crossed out, $1,299 “today only.” The crossed-out number isn’t information — it’s this.
What is an anchor?
Brands pay celebrities millions not for their expertise but because their likability spills onto this.
What is the brand (or product)?
Free trials, test drives, and “try before you buy” all exploit endowment by creating this feeling before any money changes hands.
What is ownership?
You’ve ordered the same coffee for three years because you ordered it once in 2023. The person you’re following is this.
What is your past self?
The deck’s nickname for System 1.
What is Auto-Pilot?
Our target is women 25–34, so skip podcasts — that’s a male medium.” The planner ignored the actual listener data, also known as this “actual math.”
What is the base rate?
The override for a media buyer walking into a rate negotiation: set this before the vendor names a number.
What is your own baseline value?
The override a researcher uses when testing packaging: judge these individually instead of letting one impression carry the scorecard.
What are traits (one attribute at a time)?
The override, phrased as a question, for the subscription you’ve had since freshman year.
"Would I buy this today?”
The override: break the loop and question these
What are your routines?
A bat and ball cost $1.10 total; the bat costs exactly $1.00 more. The ball’s actual price — the answer Auto-Pilot misses.
What is 5 cents?
The override, when a client says a concept “doesn’t feel like our customer”: look at these, not the vibe.
What are the statistics (the actual audience data)?
In our class demo, the irrelevant number that pulled your price estimates came from this everyday source.
What is your phone number (the last two digits)?
“The ad was funny, so the product must be good” — the halo converts entertainment into this consumer judgment.
What is quality?
“30-day money-back guarantee” looks like it protects the buyer — but marketers know almost nobody returns things, because after 30 days the product feels like this.
What is theirs (owned)?
First-purchase coupons, student discounts, and free first months all chase the same prize: becoming this for every choice you make after. /
What is the precedent (the default/habit)?
System 2’s “fatal flaw” from the hardware specs slide.
What is laziness (it won’t turn on unless forced)?
Luxury brands almost never show reliability specs — they show a driver who looks like who you want to be, betting you’ll judge the product by this instead.
What is resemblance (fit to the image)?
“Most popular” pricing tiers and a $12,000 watch in the front window do the same job: making the thing the seller actually wants to sell feel like this.
What is reasonable (cheap by comparison)?
In the Report Card example, two students had the exact same four traits — intelligent, industrious, stubborn, envious. The only thing that flipped the teacher’s judgment was this.
What is the order (of the traits)?
In the lecture’s example, the same beat-up sneakers went from “wouldn’t pay $10” to “won’t sell for less than $100” the second this happened.
What is owning them?
Loyalty programs don’t just reward repeat buying — each repeat feels like fresh evidence that your original choice was this, even if it was random.
What is good (or right)?
The Survival Excuse: System 1 isn’t dumb — it was built to do this, not math.
What is keep you alive?
The formal name for this glitch from the lecture — what System 1 commits when it ignores how common something actually is.
What is base-rate neglect?
The negotiation rule the Sticky Anchor produces — in a salary talk or a media-rate negotiation, never let the other side do this.
What is name the first number?
A brand extension — Dyson making a hair dryer, say — is a bet that the halo from this will transfer to a category the company has never touched.
What is the parent brand (existing brand equity)?
Endowment is one face of this broader asymmetry — the reason “don’t lose your discount” outpulls “earn a discount.”
What is loss aversion?
The step in the loop where System 1 rewrites your preference — “I guess I’m the kind of person who drinks this now.”
What is the Memory Hack?
Of the four ways to boot up System 2, the one about not swapping “How do I get an A?” for “What font should my essay be?”
What is ask the hard question?