Normative accounts of decision making invoke the idea that we choose in order to optimize the hedonic value, or utility, of expected outcomes. However, there are myriad examples where our behavior indicates that we readily violate the prescriptions of rational decision making. For example, when a doctor recommends options for treatment to a patient the precise manner whereby this information is presented (as a probability of an adverse outcome versus a probability of a cure) leads to dramatically different treatment uptake rates. Similarly, the value we attach to an object seems to be peculiarly bound up with whether we own this object or not, with ownership leading to inflation of value. The pervasive nature of these deviations from rationality begs the question as to their origin. I will suggest that a fundamental explanation relates to our evolutionary heritage such that how information is presented, and the very nature of this information (does it predict a likelihood of reward or punishment), elicits hard-wired responses that exert a biasing effect (and sometimes corrupting effect) on goal-directed decision making. More broadly, what this seems to tell us is that the human mind is more akin to a parliament, characterized by competing interests, rather than the expression of some monolithic all knowing, and rational, chief executive.