Free Dan Ariely!

I just got around to reading Aditya Chakrabortty's account of going shopping with Dan Ariely:

Three Chinese-origin boys are motoring down the aisle, their trolley stacked high with cheese-and-tomato spaghetti ready meals. They are engineering students.
"Did your parents teach you this was good to eat?" asks Ariely.
"No," they chorus.
"There must be other things you could have. Of all the instant foods available in the UK, the only option you like is cheese-and-tomato spaghetti value meals?"
There is no reply, only nervous giggling.

It's a great profile, well worth reading. And it talks about the amazing power of free:

"When you see something for free - for FREE! - it's like pressing a magic button. You forget about any possible downside and just think: Oh my God, it's all good!"

Thus does it make sense not to split the tab in restaurants. And also for employers to give their employees free! things, rather than cash - something Oprah Winfrey obviously understands intuitively:

At Harpo Inc. in Chicago, employees are treated to Google-esque office amenities. "There is a cafe on premises as well as Club Harpo, a workout facility, and the Spa at Harpo."

If given the choice, employees would rather have $1,000 in cash rather than a thousand dollar's worth of free stuff. But if not given the choice, they love the free stuff, partly because it's the kind of stuff they'd probably not treat themselves to normally, and partly because the cash, being fungible, will just end up being spent on something utterly unglamorous like emergency plumbing or the electricity bill. Which is one reason why all those annual blog entries about the deadweight loss of Christmas always miss the point. Even if you're paying for presents you give, you're still getting the ones you receive for free! (That's the psychology, anyway.) Which is lots of added value right there.