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The decoy (attraction) effect
Huber, Payne and Puto reported that adding a dominated option can raise the share of the option that dominates it. Two 2014 papers found no effect with natural stimuli. The popular Economist subscription example is a classroom test reported in a book review, with no source showing The Economist ran it.
- Where it sits
- Academic psychologyResearch published for other researchers and students.
- Evidence level
- ContestedThe evidence conflicts or is disputed, for example after failed replications.
- Sources inspected
- 5 of 53 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 2 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
In 1982 Joel Huber, John Payne and Christopher Puto published Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives in the Journal of Consumer Research. They found that adding an option that is worse than one existing item, but not worse than another, can raise the probability that the dominating item is chosen. In 2014 two Journal of Marketing Research papers questioned how widely the effect holds.
The psychological idea
The effect is also called the attraction effect or asymmetric dominance. Adding an inferior option raises the choice share of the option it most resembles. Huber and colleagues say they designed the study to test the regularity assumption of rational choice theory, which holds that adding an option cannot raise another option's probability of being chosen.
In practice
A review of Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational describes a three-option subscription example: electronic-only at $59, print-only at $125, and print and electronic at $125. The review reports that of 100 Sloan School students, 84 chose print and electronic and none chose print-only, while with print-only removed 32 of another 100 chose print and electronic. The review does not say who ran the test or that The Economist did.
Why it mattered
Huber and colleagues place the effect in the debate over whether preferences are constructed when people choose or merely revealed. They note that asymmetric dominance effects have also been reported in judgment, memory and policy tasks outside marketing.
Limits and qualifications
Frederick, Lee and Baskin (2014) ran 19 studies with natural stimuli and found no attraction effect, reporting it only when attributes were numbers. Yang and Lynn (2014) found 11 reliable effects in 91 attempts. Huber, Payne and Puto reply that the effect replicates under original conditions, has boundaries, and rarely occurs in strict form in real markets. The subscription figures come from a book review, not the book, and no source opened shows Economist data.
Evidence behind the claims
Huber, Payne and Puto (1982) report that adding an asymmetrically dominated option, worse than one item but not another, can raise the probability of choosing the item that dominates it.
Frederick, Lee and Baskin (2014) report 19 studies with natural stimuli that found no evidence of an attraction effect, and attraction effects when stimuli were represented numerically but not otherwise.
Yang and Lynn (2014) report 91 attempts across 23 product classes and 73 decoyed choice sets that produced only 11 reliable attraction effects.
Huber, Payne and Puto say the 1982 article was a demonstration study testing the regularity axiom and not a tool for marketing practice, argue that the effect replicates under similar conditions, suspect strict asymmetric dominance occurs rarely in the marketplace, place the effect in the debate over constructed versus revealed preferences, and cite reports of asymmetric dominance in personnel assessment, memory and policy judgments.
A review of Ariely's book describes an Economist subscription example with electronic-only at $59, print-only at $125 and print and electronic at $125, in which 100 Sloan School students gave 16 for electronic-only, 84 for the combined option and none for print-only, and a second group of 100 gave 68 for electronic-only and 32 for the combined option.
The book review does not state who ran the experiment or that The Economist ran or commissioned it; it says the magazine offered the three options and the participants were students.
People involved
- Joel Huber. Marketing researcher, original author
- John Payne. Decision researcher, original author
- Christopher Puto. Marketing researcher, original author
- Shane Frederick. Lead author of The Limits of Attraction
- Dan Ariely. Author of the book whose subscription example the review describes
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 7.3: Problem SolvingChapter 7, Thinking and Intelligence. Context. Nearest related section; it does not discuss this topic by name.Covers decision biases and heuristics, the nearest textbook material. It does not discuss decoy or attraction effects.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
5 of 5 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives: Violations of Regularity and the Similarity HypothesisHuber, J; Payne, J; Puto, C. Journal of Consumer Research 9(1), 90-98 (Oxford Academic), 1982. Journal article. Primary source.Abstract or publisher record onlyRead the abstract and bibliographic details on the publisher page (June 1982); the article is subscriber-only and was not opened.
- [2]The Limits of AttractionFrederick, S; Lee, L; Baskin, E. Journal of Marketing Research 51(4), 487-507 (copy hosted at marketing.wharton.upenn.edu), 2014. Journal article. Critique or replication.Relevant text checkedRead the first three pages (487 to 489: abstract, introduction, Studies 1a to 1s method and Table 2) as images. Later studies were not read.
- [3]More Evidence Challenging the Robustness and Usefulness of the Attraction EffectYang, S; Lynn, M. Journal of Marketing Research 51(4), 508-513 (Cornell eCommons record), 2014. Journal article. Critique or replication.Abstract or publisher record onlyRead the abstract on the Cornell repository record as returned by the fetch tool; the article itself was not opened.
- [4]Let's Be Honest About the Attraction EffectHuber, J; Payne, J; Puto, C. Journal of Marketing Research 51(4), 520-525 (copy hosted at people.duke.edu), 2014. Journal article. Secondary account.Relevant text checkedRead all six pages (520 to 525) of the commentary as images.
- [5]Predictably Irrational by Dan ArielyRibbonfarm (book review). Ribbonfarm, 2008. News report. Secondary account.Relevant text checkedRead the blog review passage on the subscription example as returned by the fetch tool. Ariely's book was not opened, and the review gives no date or experimenter for the classroom test.
Access note: The Economist example rests on a secondary book review. Ariely's later data controversies are not used and are not tied to this example by any source opened.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.