Latest / Behavioral Economics with Fexingo: Decision Making, Bias, and How People Really Spend / Why Your Brain Compares You to a Stock Photo
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've ever scrolled through a stock photo of a smiling person in a crisp blazer sipping coffee at a laptop and felt a little less okay with your own life, you are not alone — and there is actually a name for that. Luna: You are talking about the social comparison bias, right? But applied to images we know are staged. Lucas: Exactly. A 2023 study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that when people viewed aspirational stock photography — think 'happy entrepreneur in sunlit office' — they reported lower satisfaction with their own financial progress, even though they knew the images were fake. The brain doesn't fully discount the comparison. Luna: It's like your subconscious treats the stock photo as a real benchmark. That's wild. Lucas: Yeah, and the researchers called it 'the stock photo effect.' Participants saw images of models in idealized work or leisure settings, then rated how they felt about their career trajectory and savings. The drop in satisfaction was about 12 percent compared to a control group that saw neutral images. Luna: A 12 percent swing from a two-minute exposure. That is substantial. Lucas: It is. And look, we all know advertising uses aspiration. But this study isolates the mechanism: you are comparing yourself to a fictional peer. Not a celebrity, not a billionaire — just an attractive stranger who seems to have their life together. Luna: And it works because the comparison feels relevant. A stock photo of a CEO on a yacht is too distant. But a stock photo of someone at a desk? That feels like your world. Lucas: Right. The researchers called it 'attainable aspiration' — close enough to your circumstances that your brain engages, but curated to be just out of reach. And companies pay for this. Getty Images sells those packs for hundreds of dollars per image. Luna: If walking through the economy with us has made something click, I will say — a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these episodes ad-free. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Yeah, listener support is the only reason we don't have a mattress ad in the middle of this. It makes a real difference. Luna: So back to that study — did they test whether awareness of the bias blunts the effect? Lucas: They did. One group got a short debiasing prompt before viewing the images — something like 'Remember, these are staged models, not real people.' And it helped a little. The satisfaction drop went from 12 percent to about 8 percent. So awareness reduces but doesn't eliminate the effect. Luna: So even when you know it's fake, your brain still processes it as a social signal. That's the robustness of the bias. Lucas: Exactly. And this connects to a broader concept in behavioral economics: miswanting. That's the tendency to want things that won't actually make us happier. You see the stock photo of the freelancer with the laptop on a terrace, and you want that lifestyle. But the actual experience of freelance work includes tax headaches, irregular income, isolation. Luna: So you're chasing a signal, not the substance. Lucas: Right. The economist Richard Easterlin documented this in the 1970s with the Easterlin Paradox — beyond a certain point, more income doesn't reliably increase happiness. But we keep comparing upward because the comparison is automatic. Luna: And stock photos are just a modern delivery system for that old bias. Before photography, it was the neighbor's new plow. Then it was magazine ads. Now it's the 5000 images on your bank's website. Lucas: Yeah, and the scale is huge. A company like Shutterstock has over 400 million images. Most of them depict some version of success: smiling people, clean desks, happy teams. You can't browse the web without seeing them. Luna: So what can someone actually do? Beyond the debiasing prompt, is there a behavioral hack? Lucas: One approach from the study is to actively replace the comparison target. Instead of comparing to the stock photo, compare to your own past self. The researchers found that asking people to reflect on their progress over the last year — 'how much have you improved?' — reduced the negative effect by about half. Luna: That's a temporal comparison instead of a social one. It's harder to feel inadequate next to a fictional stranger when you're looking at your own trajectory. Lucas: Exactly. And this is where behavioral economics gets practical. The bias isn't going away, but you can redirect the comparison engine. Another tactic is to deliberately consume 'downward comparison' content — not in a schadenfreude way, but realistic portrayals of normal life. Luna: Like the Instagram accounts that show messy kitchens and unmade beds. Those are essentially anti-stock-photos. Lucas: Right. And there's some evidence that exposure to those reduces the aspiration gap. A 2021 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that people who viewed 'authentic' images — candid, imperfect — reported lower social comparison and higher well-being. Luna: So the fix might be curation in the opposite direction. Flood your feed with real, not aspirational. Lucas: But here's the problem: the platforms are optimized for aspirational content. It gets more engagement. The algorithm pushes the very images that trigger the bias. Luna: So the individual can counteract, but the system is working against them. That feels like a structural problem. Lucas: It is. And that's why the debiasing prompt alone isn't enough. You need to change the environment. Some companies are starting to use more realistic imagery in their marketing — Patagonia's 'Worn Wear' campaign used real customers, not models. Luna: That's a good example. But for most of us, the stock photos are everywhere. What about the workplace context? Do stock photos affect employee morale? Lucas: There's emerging research on that. A 2024 paper from the University of Toronto looked at how stock photos on corporate intranets and benefits portals shape employee satisfaction. They found that highly idealized images — think 'diverse team laughing in a meeting' — made workers feel their own teams were less cohesive by comparison. Luna: Because real teams have disagreements and awkward silences. The stock photo shows only the laughter. Lucas: Exactly. And the disconnect can actually reduce trust in the company. Employees see the image, don't recognize their own experience, and conclude the company is out of touch. Luna: So the bias has a real economic consequence — lower engagement, maybe higher turnover. Lucas: Right. And companies spend billions on stock photography. Getty Images alone had revenue over $900 million last year. Some of that money is inadvertently making employees less happy. Luna: That is a perverse incentive. You spend on imagery to attract talent, but it backfires on retention. Lucas: Yeah. And the fix is relatively cheap: use real employee photos, candid shots, authentic settings. A 2025 case study from a mid-sized tech firm found that after switching from stock to real photos on their careers page, applicant quality didn't change, but internal satisfaction scores improved by about 6 percent. Luna: So the bias works both ways. It can make you feel worse, but awareness and environmental design can mitigate it. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the takeaway. The social comparison bias is automatic, but it's not destiny. You can train yourself to spot the stock photo trigger, and you can redesign your information environment to reduce exposure. Luna: And if you're a manager or marketer, maybe think twice before buying that 'happy diverse team' image pack. Lucas: Right. Because the person looking at it might be your own employee — and they're comparing themselves to a fiction.