This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 16th, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How might the tools of economics help us better understand where we deceive ourselves,

how we choose mates, or how to get better

service from our doctors.

Economist Tyler Cowan, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, has a few suggestions

in his new book, Discover Your Inner Economist.

I spoke with him following a forum for the book yesterday.

When advertisers try to get us to buy something they often play to our desires,

more recently have played to our sense of what we want out of life,

not just the actual direct benefit of the product itself.

They actually play in many cases to our self-deceptions what we think we ought to be and if we

have this product we could be that thing. Do you have any advice for people in

terms of how they might want to evaluate how they're marketed to to avoid being sucked

into a self-deception?

Well, often an advertisement is trying to sell a kind of affiliation.

If you buy this product, you'll be cool.

If you buy this product, you'll belong to a certain peer group.

But the very fact that the product is being advertised means that in economic terms its price is

considerably above its marginal cost.

Most of the time what in fact you need to produce that affiliation

is more self-deception rather than less. Just talk yourself into thinking you belong to that

...