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thriftwy

Authors seem to have misconceptions about how people work:

...participants were asked to choose one of the following:

A free Hershey’s Kiss

A $0.13 Lindt truffle (a superior product in quality that retails for multiples more than a Hershey’s Kiss)

Well obviously, I'm getting a free thing as a no-brainer, and then I also decide whether I want the paid thing or not.

They seem to be oblivious to transaction costs. What if they offered free candy after the e-mail confirmation, but the paid truffle no strings attached?

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Also the context is missing for the $0.01 Hershey’s Kiss. I wouldn’t stop for sweets in a supermarket sample offering if I had to pay for it but in a controlled study I would make a decision between the two chocolates.

Also paying a penny for something would be a major inconvenience at this point. I haven't carried coins in ages. If it is adding a penny onto some other bill, no problem. But a separate paying experience of just 1 penny would be quite costly to me.

All I came away with was the suspicion that most people understand the different levels of quality in chocolate.

I won't eat free Hershey's chocolate, it isn't worth the calories.

The journalist may suffer from misconceptions, but the version of the experiment to which these results apply was conducted so that the transaction costs were equal in either case (source: https://people.duke.edu/~dandan/webfiles/PapersPI/Zero%20as%..., see Experiment 3).

> Well obviously, I'm getting a free thing as a no-brainer, and then I also decide whether I want the paid thing or not.

Not permitted. If you take the "free" chocolate they will not sell you the fancy one at any price. It is not obvious how people behave under that circumstance.

Then the hershi candy is not free neither the paid option costs 13c. There's an opportunity cost already baked in both prices, if taking one option prevents you from the other one. It can be translated into $$

Now I also know they don't understand how trade works. Which puts them either under 5 yo or before 5000 BCE

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