Price = Quality?

Matthew was really interested in a recent cell phone commercial that showed people literally cutting their bills in half (with chainsaws, swords, etc.).  I explained that people didn't really cut up their bills, but that the advertisers were trying to find a catchy way to illustrate that their service only cost half as much.  Matthew thought about that for a minute, and said, "I'd probably stick with the first company."  I asked him why, and he said, "If the other one only costs half as much, it probably has a lot of problems and might not work right." Ha!  The price = quality heuristic develops early.  :)  (I told him that sometimes it's true that you get what you pay for, and sometimes it's not.)

Matthew also asked me the other night how the scientists knew what the names of the dinosaurs were.  I told him that the people who discovered the dinosaurs named them.  He seemed a little skeptical of this, and said, "Maybe the scientists were just guessing.  That seems to be mostly what scientists do."  (Young man, we call it hypothesizing!)