Research by behavioral scientists Amar Cheema and Dilip Soman demonstrated the power of decision points in a clever (and, I assume, delicious) study. They gave each participant a package of twenty cookies to snack on while completing a series of tasks. They packaged the cookies in three different ways: all twenty stacked in one column; divided up into smaller sections with white waxed paper; or divided up with pieces of colored waxed paper. The tasks themselves didn’t matter. What the researchers really cared about was whether the packaging affected how many cookies the participants ate and
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