How artificial urgency hijacks our brain’s priority system — and makes us grab the wrong thing
Hotels.com shows one room left at this rate.
Amazon promises free delivery if you order within 22 minutes.
Your brain screams: ACT NOW.
Welcome to the Mere Urgency Effect in action.
Researchers tested this by offering participants identical tasks with different rewards.
Task A: Earn five Hershey’s Kisses (better reward)
Task B: Earn three Hershey’s Kisses (worse reward)
When neither had deadlines, only 13% chose the inferior option.
But add a tight deadline to the worse task?
Suddenly 31% grabbed the lower reward simply because it felt urgent.
Time pressure makes us stupid.
I see this constantly in product marketing. Brands create artificial scarcity that triggers panic buying of suboptimal choices.
Groupon became a legend through flash sales with countdown timers. People bought deals they didn’t need because the clock was ticking.
Booking.com shows “3 other people looking at this hotel” with urgency messaging, driving bookings for rooms that might otherwise go empty.
GameStop’s limited-edition console bundles create lines of people buying accessories they don’t even want, just to secure the main item.
Our Dog Brain can’t distinguish real urgency from manufactured pressure.
The amygdala sees a deadline and assumes it’s life-or-death important, overriding rational analysis.
This works because humans evolved in environments where urgent usually meant survival-critical.
But now marketers exploit that wiring.
The most successful urgency campaigns don’t just pop up a countdown timer. Instead, they make the urgent option feel like the smart choice by framing delay as loss.
“Price increases tomorrow” hits harder than “Sale ends tonight.”
The defense strategy: When you feel pressure to act fast, pause.
Ask yourself: “Would I want this without the deadline?”
If the answer is no, the urgency is probably manufactured.
Real urgency creates real value.
Fake urgency creates disdain.
Remember this: The best experiences (and deals) rarely come with countdown timers.
What’s the worst “urgent” purchase decision you’ve ever made under artificial time pressure?
Forward this to someone who impulse-buys during flash sales, or reach out to my team of product marketing strategists at Graphos Product.