Some Creativity

Shankar Vedantam has written an article in  Washington Post about the decoy effect.

What the decoy effect basically shows is that when people cannot decide between two front-runners, they use the third candidate as a sort of measuring stick. If one front-runner looks much better than the third candidate, people gravitate toward that front-runner. Third candidates, in other words, can make a complicated decision feel simple.

The Wikipedia page gives an interesting example of MP3 players to illustrate the effect, while the article in the Washington Post sites the examples of choosing a restaurant, and a politican.