That “free shipping” is a better deal. It generally means they’ve added the cost into the product instead, but you feel like you’ve gotten a better deal.

The original Febreze was unscented, but nobody believed it worked so they added scent to it.

Beats headphones have weights inside them to make them heavier and give the illusion of quality and sturdiness.

Your perception of bad luck. The human brain is predisposed to remember bad experiences more vividly than the good ones. Thus, for an example, you may say your luck is always awful at tolls, when in reality you only get stuck in traffic 20%-50% of the time.

Any bandaids with cartoon characters on them instantly made my students feel better.

Do commissioned creative stuff, if I deliver same or next day, people don’t think I spent enough time on it. If I wait three days to deliver, people are happy because they assume I worked on their project nonstop even though I was done a day or two prior.

How long it takes a Coinstar to process and count coins and return a receipt. It finishes quickly. So quickly that folks are skeptical of the accuracy. So a fake delay (with fake counting noises) was built in giving folks more confidence in the results.

I worked at a kid’s birthday party place for a couple years in high school. So many kids would cry because they fell over, bumped their arm, etc. Never anything bad. I’d say something like “can you shake your foot around? Does it feel better?” “How about jumping in a circle?” “Alright, we are going to blow on your hand so it feels better” and then ask if they are ready to play again. Works like a charm.

When I worked/trained tech support, our agents would always get pushback from customers when we asked them to power cycle their phone, which nine times out of ten would fix their issue. So, I had them tell the customer to read them some numbers off the back of the battery (when they were still removable!) that we absolutely did not need. Then we told them we refreshed a few systems, and they put their battery back in and it’s all fixed! Alternatively, when batteries couldn’t be removed, we’d tell them that if the phone was powered on while we did the update, it could ruin their SIM card. So they’d make sure to power off their phone. I’d do nothing. They’d turn it back on and it worked great! But if I had TOLD them to power cycle their phones? No way.

When you give your young sibling an unconnected controller after he/she kept bugging to join the game.

As a former lifeguard, I can assure you that whatever “cleanup” you see lifeguards doing after someone vomits in the pool is almost certainly just show. There isn’t really anything you can do, you just let the filter/chlorine take care of it and pretend to clean to please the suburban moms.

So I’m sure this has happened to other people, but this question just reminded me of my principal. During meetings and such he uses the school auditorium, and most of the time I (Senior now at the school) have to run the sound and lights. He’s extremely annoying about it, and ALWAYS asks for his mic to be turned up when in reality, he’s already extremely loud and will bust the speakers. I just pretend to turn it up and ask him if it’s good, and he speaks and says “that’s perfect, thank you!” I swear he thinks I’m doing an amazing job and would bring me a coke or something for dealing with the meetings half of the day. Greatest placebo to use against others that I’ve done.

My dog’s medicine coming out of his treat tin instead of medicine packaging. Makes a seconds-ago-disgusting-medicine taste mysteriously treat-like.

Loading spinners on web pages. I once had a user complain to me a web app was too slow (and it was pretty fast). So I tested him by making the animation spinner spin much faster. He went to my boss to praise me how much faster the web app was.

A lot of these “psychology tricks and tips” you’ll see online. Just in general, a lot of them have no scientific proof, but they work because everyone thinks they do. This is how I actually live my life, I just tell my self things like these and placebo myself into changing my mindset or mood, ya’ll should try it it works.

I sold Christmas trees as a kid in junior and senior high school. Learned a trick for super fussy customers who had me hold up multiple trees to show them. After the tenth or so tree, I’d yell to my coworker, “Hey Mike, if they don’t want this one put it aside for me. Nicest tree I’ve seen this year.” Worked like a charm!

When my cat wants fresh food, but he still has some in his bowl, I pretend to put more in there. He usually falls for it.