Our brains tend to group things according to their closeness to each other. This is often referred to as the proximity principle.

Picture a group of black dots. Now picture another group of dots several inches away. This second group consists mostly of red dots, but not entirely. There are three black dots mixed in.

What we see is two groups of dots. One group’s dots are black and the other’s are mostly red. Our minds don’t think of the three black dots as belonging to the black group. We see them as part of the red. We define the two groups based on location, not color.

To get a better idea of this, consider the difference between lines and columns.

Type the letter O five times (OOOOO). Hit return and do it again. Repeat this until there are five lines of five O’s. What do we see? Five lines of O’s.

Put a space between each O (that is, O O O O O), and our perception changes. We see, not five lines of O’s, but rather five columns of them.

The proximity principle plays an important role in how our minds see and react to things on our phones and computers. A poor grouping of choices can cause us to click on the wrong button.

I recently saw a page that required a yes or no response, and hit No when I meant Yes. Why? The response area looked like this:

o    Yes o    No

The place to click for Yes was off to the left. The design caused the button for No to be near Yes. My mind saw the circle to the right of Yes as being where to click for that choice. It wasn’t.

I think this was simply a case of poor design, but some devious companies do this sort of thing on purpose, tricking people into clicking the wrong thing. For example, a free document or program is offered, and you are directed to the download page. There, at the top, is the name of the item, and near it is a large button labeled Download.

You see the name of the item and you see the word download, so you click. A program that you don’t want begins to install itself. What happened?

The proximity principle made Download seem to refer to your wanted item. However, words off to the side of the Download button indicate that it’s actually for some crappy, invasive, hard to get rid of program you don’t want.

A bit further down the page, there’s a smaller button for the thing you actually wanted. The designers used the proximity principle to trick you into clicking the wrong button.

The power of proximity goes far beyond what we see. Psychologically, we are powerfully influenced by the people near us. We tend to become like those we associate with.

Many years ago my mom warned me against hanging out with the wrong crowd. She didn’t know psychology, but she understood life.

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