Behavioral psychologists George Loewenstein and Dan Ariely set up a very interesting experiment in the University of California at Berkeley. They went out to the campus and invited male students to participate in a survey on decision making. The survey was divided into two parts. At the start, consenting participants were given a brief introduction to the survey methodology. They were told to bring home a laptop computer and to answer the questions only when they are alone. Up till this point in time, the participants had no inkling what the genre of the survey is about. Participants would then return to the comfort of their rooms, power up the laptop and get down to answering three sets of survey questions. The very first instruction given by the program loaded in the computer would be for participants to imagine that they are sexually aroused and answer the questions as if ......