We’ve all being there…
We bring our date to the carnival for a bit of fun.
We then let ourselves get competitive, determined, and all of a sudden the person we’re with sees a teddy or a plush toy that they would love to win.
You take a few attempts and just as you’re about to give up, you sense their disappointment. This is when your true determination comes in and you end up losing all your change trying to win the teddy yet you don’t have it.
So who gets the last laugh? The carnival of course!
But why is this a common issue? Is it your skillset? Are you just not good enough? Are your lacking with your motor skills?
As someone who does have fine motor skill issues, I can assure you, I used to believe this was the case.
However, it turns out the carnival was designed to make things challenging to near-impossible to completely impossible.
How do they do this?
Well, they mainly play with our cognitive bias’ to persuade us and allow us to overestimate our own skillsets.
They then use little tricks that are barely noticeable, such as slightly adjusting height and distance you are from basketball hoops in case you’re used to perfecting your 3-Pointer!
We’re also so bad at estimating probability in these scenarios that if we calculated our true chances of winning, we probably wouldn’t bother trying.
Personally, I’m a sucker for the tricks and scams that the carnival play on us.
Don’t believe us? Watch Mark Rober explain it in further detail above:
