The Comparison Effect

Used car salesmen understand the Comparison Effect very well.


When you step foot in their lot, they will usually begin by directing you to a junky car with a steep price. They expect you to be disgusted and think, "No way I'd ever buy that." But car #1 is not meant to entice you to purchase, it's just a decoy to set up car #2. The dealer will then show you a pretty nice car with the same or lower price than the first and you think, "Wow, that's a really good deal! I'll take it!"

That, my friends, is the Comparison Effect.

Though this phenomenon is mostly intuitive, it hasn't stopped sociologists from doing some pretty fun experiments on it. One in particular involved having college guys rate how attractive their blind dates were, depending on whether they watched Charlie's Angels immediately before their date or not. And the results?

You guessed it. Those who watched Charlie's Angels right before their dates rated their dates far lower than those guys who did not watch the show.

I say all this by way of introduction. For a long time now, I've been feeling the adverse effects of the Comparison Effect. Ever since starting law school, I've been feeling worse about myself than I have ever felt before.

Never have I been so completely surrounded by such brilliant, articulate, and accomplished people. I feel like turd next to them.

It's ironic because most people warned me about getting a "big head" because I got into a fancy schmance law school. They worried that I, their laid-back, under-achieving couch potato, would morph into a shrill and pompous academic. But quite the opposite happened. More than any other time in my life I feel like a second-class citizen...an inferior being.

It's been humbling to feel like a dwarf among giants. But I have to admit the "giants" have all been very friendly and I have benefited from standing on their shoulders to see more than I ever could have otherwise.