Evaluate each option against your criteria before comparing options to each other

Score options independently first — so the comparison set can’t retroactively redefine what good looks like.

Why it works

The decoy effect operates by changing the comparison context: the decoy makes one option look relatively better by providing an easy "win." If you have already decided what you want (your criteria, your minimum acceptable standards, your priorities) before you see the full set of options, the decoy cannot reframe the question. This is the "pre-mortem for preferences" — locking in the criteria before the choice set is presented.

How to do it

1. Before looking at options, write down the two or three most important criteria for this decision and your minimum acceptable threshold on each.
2. Evaluate each option independently against those criteria — not against the other options.
3. Score or rank based on independent criteria scores.
4. Only then compare total scores across options — the comparison set can’t shift the criteria retroactively.

Evidence

Huber, Payne and Puto (1982) showed that adding a dominated decoy increased preference for the dominating option, violating preference independence. Evaluating options against pre-stated criteria is a normative decision-quality technique that structurally prevents context-dependent preference construction. (observational)

Pre-specifying criteria requires enough domain knowledge to know what matters; in truly novel choices, criteria may emerge from the comparison rather than being knowable in advance.

Sources

• Huber, Payne & Puto (1982), Adding asymmetrically dominated alternatives: Violations of regularity and the similarity hypothesis, Journal of Consumer Research

Common mistake

Writing down criteria but making them vague enough ("good value") that they can be satisfied by the decoy-inflated option — criteria must be specific enough to be applied independently.