One of the commonest assumption among people is if they put all of their effort into doing something, eventually they will become the best at what they're doing. Well, they will succeed of course, that's the reward for their hard work, determination and perseverance, but the chances for you to become the best will depends mostly on the factor of selection. This is "swimmer's body illusion" at work. We're trying to lose weight and get a perfect shaped body so we turn our attention into swimming as swimmers have well built streamlined bodies. What we doesn't realize is that, they don't have well built bodies because of intensive training in swimming. They are a good swimmers because of their well built bodies. How their bodies are designed is a factor of selection and not the results of their activities.
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There has been a lot of cosmetic advertisements portrayed by local or international actors or models in the television, internet or any advertising platform. The advertisement were so successful that eventually the cosmetic's sale for the month soar up. Consumers bought the cosmetic products advertised by the actors believing that the products will make them beautiful. In actuality, it's not the product which make these women model like. Frankly speaking, models are born attractive, and only for this reasons, they are the candidates for cosmetics advertising. Beauty is the factor of selection not the result, and when we confused between those two, we will fall prey to the swimmer's body illusion.
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We have to analyze every single things that we want to achieve carefully. It's important for us to not fall prey to this kind of illusion but if you are an advertiser or involved in any marketing company, this illusion is a gold mine. Without this illusion half of the advertising campaign will fail. For example, is the first ranking university in Malaysia is a good university? Nobody knows, it could be true and it also could means the university is actually terrible but recruits the brightest students around. Sometimes the lessons given in the school is mediocre, but they still produce a good result.
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There are many factors that can influence the ranking of the university and swimmer's body illusion is at its best in this kind of situation. People will start to spread the word about the success of the university in producing graduates and thousands of student will apply hoping to be admitted into those university. Their admission rate will increase which will increase their financial. This is a successful marketing/advertising campaign using swimmer's body illusion.
If you graduated from the lowest ranking school, you might be lacking compared to the others but sometime you might be better than the others. It's important to be wary so that this kind of illusion will not affect the product of our endeavor.
Source: The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli "Does Harvard Make You Smarter"
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