Medium popcorn is a trap

A magazine once offered three subscriptions: digital only for 59 dollars, print only for 125, and print plus digital... also for 125. Who would ever choose print only? Nobody — and that was the plan. With that absurd option on the menu, most of a group of students picked the combo. Remove it, and the majority switched to the cheap one.

It's the decoy effect, documented in the lab since 1982: an option clearly worse than another attracts no buyers, but it changes how the rest compare. Suddenly one of them looks like a bargain.

Popcorn works the same way: the medium costs almost as much as the large not because they expect to sell it, but so the large seems a steal and you hand over the money smiling.

Practical rule: when an option makes no sense at all, ask yourself what it's pushing you towards.