Anika van der Berg

Research-informed essays on cognitive biases, pricing psychology, and ethical choice architecture.

Consumer Behavior Processing Fluency and Conversion: The Hidden Power of Easy When something is easy to process, people like it more, trust it more, and believe it more. This is a cognitive bias with measurable effects on conversion. May 22, 2026
Pricing Psychology The Compromise Effect: Why People Choose the Middle Option The tendency to choose the middle option in a set is not a preference. It is a decision strategy for people who do not know what they want. May 15, 2026
Decision Science Cognitive Load and the Checkout Flow: Why Complexity Kills Conversion Every field you add to a checkout form is a small tax on working memory. Cognitive load theory tells us exactly when that tax becomes too high. May 8, 2026
AI & Behavioral Science 10 AI Marketing Tools, Evaluated Through a Behavioral Science Lens Most reviews evaluate features and pricing. This one evaluates the cognitive mechanisms these tools exploit, automate, and occasionally neutralize. April 19, 2026
Decision Science When Charts Exploit Cognitive Biases: A Conversation with Jens Eriksson Data visualization is not neutral. Every chart encodes decisions that interact with the viewer's cognitive biases in predictable and often exploitable ways. March 26, 2026
Pricing Psychology Anchoring and the Pricing Page: What the Research Actually Shows The anchoring effect is the most cited bias in pricing strategy. It is also among the most misapplied. March 19, 2026
Decision Science The Decoy Effect in SaaS Plan Selection How adding a third, dominated option shifts preference — and the conditions under which it fails. February 7, 2026
Consumer Behavior When Social Proof Backfires Showing "1,000 people bought this" can actually decrease conversion. Here's when and why. January 22, 2026
Decision Science Choice Overload: The Evidence and Its Limits The jam study launched a movement. The replications painted a more complicated picture. December 10, 2025
Pricing Psychology Loss Aversion and the Free Trial Why free trials convert — and what the endowment effect tells us about the ethics of it. November 13, 2025
Ethics Defaults, Dark Patterns, and the Ethics of Choice Architecture When does a nudge become a shove? The line is thinner than most practitioners think. October 17, 2025
Consumer Behavior Scarcity: Real, Manufactured, and the Space Between Urgency tactics work. They also erode trust. The research suggests both are true simultaneously. September 11, 2025
Decision Science The Peak-End Rule in Customer Experience People remember experiences by their peak intensity and their ending. Most SaaS companies optimize for neither. August 14, 2025
AI & Behavioral Science The Cognitive Biases AI Marketing Tools Exploit (Including Their Own Users) The tools designed to optimize your marketing are themselves marketed using every bias in the book. July 21, 2025
AI & Behavioral Science The Personalization Paradox: When AI Gets Too Good at Predicting You Reactance theory suggests there is a ceiling to personalization. Most AI tools have not found it yet. June 9, 2025
AI & Research Methods AI-Powered A/B Testing and the Illusion of Statistical Significance AI testing tools declare winners faster. That is not the same as declaring them correctly. May 27, 2025
AI & Pricing Psychology Can AI Optimize Pricing? A Behavioral Science Perspective AI can optimize for revenue. It cannot optimize for perceived fairness. That distinction matters. April 4, 2025
AI & Consumer Behavior AI Content Tools and the Science of Persuasion Jasper and Copy.ai through the lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model. March 4, 2025
Research Methods What the Replication Crisis Means for Marketing Psychology Power poses, ego depletion, and priming. What marketers believed that turned out to be wrong. February 5, 2025
Decision Science Framing Effects: Gain vs. Loss in Conversion Copy "Save $200" vs. "Don't lose $200." Prospect theory applied to landing pages. January 17, 2025