A $2000 Pair of Shoes | VictorSchueller.com

Take a look at the shoe above.  Then, answer these two questions:

1. Does a pair of these shoes cost more than $2000 per pair?

2. How much would you expect to pay for a pair of these shoes?  Write down the amount you come up with. 

While you think over the answers to those questions, I want to tell you about a very fascinating video I watched on YouTube of Leonard Mlodinow, who was talking about his newest book, titled Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior.

During his discussion about the subliminal mind, he talked about how our brains are designed to patch various past experiences, prejudices, and other neurological aspects together to bring about what we perceive to be an experienced event.  The video was excellent at pointing out how our memories of what we saw or heard, or what we think we saw or heard may not really be what we thought it to be.

Through provocative and entertaining examples, you can see what images really look like to our eyes, how we fill in what consonants we think were spoken when covered up by a cough, and how we listen to records played backwards to hear odes to Satan.  It was quite interesting, and a remarkable eye-opener on how impressionable our unconscious mind can be!

One theme that Mlodinow hit on was especially appealing to me — when we think about how our brain patches together this information to create something that “is” but in reality “isn’t,” we usually think of this process as a negative — how we’re not really experiencing reality, or how we’re making things up but they really aren’t accurate representations of what really “is.”  However, I like how Mlodinow said that we can use this function of the brain to be a benefit to us.

When we are faced with a challenge, Mlodinow explains, we have an advantage, because we are capable of creating an over-inflated view of what we are able to do, or how “above average” we are.  He pointed out, for example, that in a survey of high school students who were asked if they thought they were above average, the results showed 100% of those surveyed thought they were above average!  We can take this over-inflated view of ourselves to change the way we treat incoming data.  Mlodinow points out this is called “motivated reasoning.”

What happens during this motivated reasoning is that when we are looking at data, our unconscious minds adjust the weight of the data, and then adjust the view of the methodology to confirm what pre-existing beliefs or desires we have.  In other words, we are really incapable of making an objective decision about something.  Our minds determine the viewpoint we want, and then we adjust the data to support the conclusion we desire — like a lawyer, sifting through evidence and constructing an argument for their client or position.

Who knew?  Our minds are like lawyers! 🙂  So, we can really use this aspect of the mind to our advantage — we can focus on what it is that we want, and then our mind will adjust whatever data we need to support what we desire.  This is a tremendous tool that can provide us with a tremendous advantage!

Another concept Mlodinow played with during his presentation was one called “anchoring.”  So, going back to the shoe example, what amount did you write down?

The cost of the pair of shoes was actually $34.95 at Payless.  How close were you?  If you inflated the price, it was because I “anchored” you to a higher number, even if you knew there was no way that pair of shoes was $2000.  Just another way the subconscious and subliminal mind can play tricks on us.

Please leave a comment to let me know what number you wrote down, and so we can see what other people thought the shoes were worth!  I’d love to see how this experiment worked! 🙂

If you are interested in watching the full video of Mlodinow’s presentation, here it is…