I convinced a coworker to eat a packet of ketchup/catsup by telling her it was for a class. I didn’t think that was a sufficient rationale, but she told me she would do it if I dared her. So I did, and she did. I have been talking about this class for a while at work and my coworkers have somewhat of an invested emotional interest at this point, so I think that helped make her happy to eat ketchup. My other coworker said she had to do crazy things like that all the time when she was rushing her sorority, so that eating strange things like that wasn’t really a big deal.
I think people make decisions for strange reasons.
Tags: cognition, decision making, psychology, reasoning
