If the 5 lovely plates were literally identical in the two sets, I think (for many people) it might serve as a sort of “hint” that they should consider the clever course of action, the one that involves splitting up the B set (i.e. doing one thing with the 10 cracked & chipped plates, and doing a different thing with the 5 other B plates). That same clever splitting idea might also pop into some people’s heads for the B-versus-C comparison, but I think it would be less obvious / salient, so fewer people would think of that, leaving at least a subset of people who would choose both B-over-A if that were the choice, and C-over-B if that were the choice.
But in that kind of situation, wouldn’t those people also pick A over B for the same reason?
If the 5 lovely plates were literally identical in the two sets, I think (for many people) it might serve as a sort of “hint” that they should consider the clever course of action, the one that involves splitting up the B set (i.e. doing one thing with the 10 cracked & chipped plates, and doing a different thing with the 5 other B plates). That same clever splitting idea might also pop into some people’s heads for the B-versus-C comparison, but I think it would be less obvious / salient, so fewer people would think of that, leaving at least a subset of people who would choose both B-over-A if that were the choice, and C-over-B if that were the choice.