This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

We've all done it. You go to the store for a pair of socks and come out with a mega pack of soda.

You go out to get shampoo and come back with a fancy razor. It's hard to stick to what's

on your list. I challenge you to go to IKEA and leave with only the thing for which you game.

Just try to buy a lamp without buying a cutting board it can't be done

You absolutely knew this but retail spaces are designed to do this to you

producer Avery Truffman.

The store is trying to look so beautiful, so welcoming, the item so enticingly displayed

in such vast quantity that you cannot help but be drawn in and then drawn towards

something you don't need. This is the Gruen effect. The Gruen effect or sometimes

called the Gruen Transfer.

It's that moment when you walk into a store

and the design of the store is so overwhelming

and dazzling that you begin mindlessly consuming.

The Gruen effect is named after Victor Gruen.

So who was Gruen?

He's a complicated, complex, contradictory guy.

Jeff Hardwick wrote the biography of Victor Gruen, who was born Victor Grunbaum.

Born in Vienna in 1904 and he is Jewish in Vienna, leaves in 38.

Good call Grumbaum.

And makes his way eventually to New York City.

Once in New York, Grunin made a name for himself

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