Clay Chaszeyka
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Explore the intersection of science, philosophy, creativity, and marketing with Clay Chaszeyka. Thought-provoking essays that connect data, design, and deep questions about how we think, create, and exist. Ideas at the edge of thought, exploring what we know, how we think, and why it matters.

Curious by nature. Strategic by trade. Obsessed with how things work, and why we fall for them.

Welcome to the Matrix (of Your Mind): How Cognitive Bias Runs the Show

You probably think you’re the one making decisions. You picked that brand of toothpaste during your recent trip to the grocery store. You upgraded to the premium plan to receive a discount, rather than opting for the free trial.

You believe what you believe because you’ve looked at the facts, weighed the options, and made the best call for yourself. Right?

Well… maybe. But maybe not.

Because what if your brain isn’t the mastermind you think it is? What if it’s more like an overworked stage manager—pulling levers, cueing lights, trying to keep the illusion of control running smoothly while the actors improvise and the set catches fire?

Welcome to the Matrix.

Not the one with trench coats and bullet time, but the real matrix: the invisible framework of cognitive biases that shape your perception, influence your behavior, and quietly steer your choices—often without your awareness.

If you're in marketing, design, politics, or media, chances are, you’re not just living in the Matrix. You’re helping to build it.

The Brain’s Cheat Codes

Let’s start with the basics. Your brain is lazy. It’s not stupid, but lazy. It’s a biological machine built for efficiency, not accuracy. Evolution didn’t care if you interpreted the rustling in the bushes correctly. It just needed you to run before the tiger pounced.

So your brain developed shortcuts. These are rapid-fire methods for making sense of incomplete information. Psychologists refer to them as cognitive biases, and there are hundreds of them. You’ve probably heard of a few:

  • Confirmation bias: seeking information that supports what you already believe

  • Anchoring bias: relying too heavily on the first piece of information you receive

  • Availability heuristic: overestimating what’s memorable or recent

  • Social proof: assuming something is good if others are doing it

These shortcuts are usually helpful. They let us move through life without constantly questioning every decision; however, in a world of algorithms, notifications, persuasive design, and thousands of marketing messages a day, they’ve become easy to exploit, especially by marketers competing for a share of your wallet.

Marketing as Weaponized Psychology

Here’s a hard truth: if you're in marketing, you're in the influence business. You're not just selling products. You're shaping perception, bending attention, and nudging behavior. Often, you are doing so through the very biases people don’t realize they have, which is not inherently unethical. Marketing can raise awareness, change minds, and promote meaningful choices. On the other hand, it can also manipulate, mislead, and exploit.

Here’s a simple example: you visit an online store and see a shirt that was originally $59.99, now marked down to $32.

That’s anchoring. You’re not evaluating whether the shirt is worth $32. You’re comparing it to the initial price, and it feels like a deal—even if the shirt was never worth $59.99 in the first place. If you’ve ever been to a Kohl’s store, you have seen this in action. (Seriously, is there a time when Kohl’s products are not discounted?)

Now add scarcity bias: “Only 3 left.”
And social proof: “128 people have this in their cart.”
And a countdown timer, which triggers a sense of urgency.

You’re no longer buying a shirt. You’re reacting to a carefully engineered psychological sequence. By the time you hit "Checkout," the decision was mostly automatic. That doesn’t make you gullible. It makes you human. Your brain did what it was designed to do: make a fast, confident choice using mental shortcuts.

The Invisible Nudge

Let’s take this further.

Have you ever changed your mind about something—politics, food, money—and then retroactively justified the change? That’s post-rationalization, often driven by cognitive dissonance. Your mind prefers internal consistency, so it rewrites your own reasoning to preserve comfort.

Or maybe you've seen a certain product or slogan dozens of times, and now it just feels right. That’s the mere exposure effect. Familiarity breeds comfort, and comfort breeds trust. The same thing happens with popular music, shows, and so on.

Then there’s confirmation bias, the powerhouse of the bias world. We don’t just have opinions. We seek information that reinforces them and ignore the rest. It feels like we’re reasoning, but we're often just defending our pre-chosen stance.

Now, consider what that means for marketing. If your message confirms a preexisting belief, it lands easily. If it challenges one, it meets resistance. Good messaging works with what's inside the customer’s mind, not against it.

The Matrix isn’t a metaphor for deception. Instead, it’s a real system of cognitive reflexes, built into every human brain. The marketing world happens to understand the code.

Ethical Influence or Mental Malware?

This raises an important question. Is it okay to use cognitive bias to guide people toward action? Well, it depends on one’s intent.

If you're nudging someone toward something that aligns with their values, goals, or well-being (something they would likely do if they had more clarity or time to reflect) that's helpful. That’s good design.

However, if you're nudging them into decisions they wouldn't make under full awareness, or creating pressure where none should exist, that’s manipulation. The difference lies in whether your work respects or overrides autonomy. You see, trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.

In an age of skepticism and digital fatigue, transparency isn’t just ethical, it’s strategic. When consumers feel tricked, they don’t just walk away. They talk to one another in forums, in reviews, and on social media.

Knowing how the Matrix works gives you power. What you do with it defines whether you’re building a relationship or burning one.

Can We Escape the Matrix?

Because these biases are hardwired, we can never entirely escape. You can’t remove them any more than you can uninstall the way your eyes perceive light or your ears interpret sound, but you can learn to see them.

If you're in marketing or design:

  • Study the biases and how they work.

  • Ask not just “What converts?” but “What builds trust?”

  • Design with transparency and respect in mind.

If you're a consumer:

  • Slow down when urgency feels forced.

  • Ask yourself: am I making a decision or reacting to a design?

  • Look for the framing around the message, not just the message itself.

You can’t fully escape the Matrix, but you can choose when to participate. You can choose to be present and notice.

Next in the Series: Anchoring and the Price You Didn’t See

This is the first article in a series examining how biases influence our lives and how marketers can utilize or counteract them.

Next, we’ll dive into one of the most profitable mental tricks of all: anchoring.

  • Why restaurants put $99 steaks on the menu even if no one orders them

  • How Apple convinces you the “middle” model is just right

  • Why your perception of value is never objective

If you’ve ever wondered why a $9 coffee feels easier to buy than a $3 app, you’ll want to read it.

Stay Curious

This blog is a place where science, psychology, design, and philosophy all intersect. If you enjoy pulling apart how things work—not just technically, but psychologically—then let’s keep this going.

If you’ve noticed a cognitive bias in your own life, or you’ve used one in your work (for better or worse), I’d love to hear about it.

Awareness is step one. Perspective is step two. After that, you can decide whether to keep building the Matrix or find ways to bend it.

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