PsychologicalNEUTRAL — Rhetoric

Choice Blindness

What it is

People often fail to notice when the outcome of a choice they just made is switched for something else, and then confidently explain reasons for the choice they did not make — showing that the account of a preference is constructed after the fact.

How it works

Johansson, Hall, Sikström and Olsson showed in 2005 that when people chose the more attractive of two faces and were then handed the other one by sleight of hand, most did not notice — and, asked why they had chosen it, gave fluent reasons for a choice they had not made, sometimes citing features that only the substituted face had. Detection rates were low even with long viewing times. The finding replicated in Hall and colleagues' 2010 supermarket study with jam and tea, and then in domains where it should have failed: in 2012 participants defended moral positions opposite to the ones they had just marked on a survey, and in 2013 Swedish voters presented with a manipulated summary of their own answers shifted toward the opposing coalition, with a share expressing willingness to change their vote. The mechanism is that introspection does not read out the causes of a choice; it constructs an account from the outcome, and any outcome will do. The relevance to persuasion is that the reasons people give for their preferences are less stable than the preferences themselves, that misreporting someone's stated view back to them can move the view, and that confident, fluent justification is not evidence that a choice was ever made.

Real-world examples

  • •In the 2005 face study, participants detected only a minority of the swaps and confabulated reasons for the rest, including features the face they had actually chosen did not have.
  • •Hall and colleagues' 2010 study in a Swedish supermarket had shoppers taste two jams, choose one, and then taste “their choice” again from the other jar; most did not notice, including for pairs as different as cinnamon-apple and grapefruit.
  • •The 2013 Swedish election study gave voters a summary of their own answers on political issues that had been altered toward the other side; many defended the altered positions and a share said they would consider changing their vote.
  • •Push-poll and sales scripts that misreport a respondent's earlier answer — “so you said price wasn't the main concern” — are working the same mechanism, whether or not the scriptwriter knows the literature.
  • •Eyewitnesses who identified a suspect from a line-up and were later shown a different face as “their” identification often accepted it and justified it, a finding with direct forensic consequences.

Ethical guidelines

  • ●Never misreport a person's stated choice or answer back to them; the evidence is that they may accept the misreport and defend it, which is the manufacture of consent rather than its discovery.
  • ●When collecting choices, preferences or survey answers, give people their actual record to review and correct.
  • ●Do not treat a fluent justification as proof that a choice was informed or even made; design decisions so that the choice itself, not the story about it, is what gets recorded.

How to defend against it

  • ►Keep your own record of what you chose and why, made at the time; when someone summarises your position back to you, check it against the record rather than against your feeling of recognition.
  • ►When you hear yourself explaining a choice fluently, ask whether you remember making it or are constructing the account now; the feeling of having reasons is not evidence of having had them.
  • ►In surveys, sales conversations and negotiations, restate your position in your own words before agreeing that a summary of it is accurate.
  • ►Treat “as you said earlier” as a claim to verify rather than a reminder; ask to see the earlier answer.

References

  1. Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310(5745), 116-119 · link
    The founding face-choice study: low detection of swapped outcomes and confabulated reasons.
  2. Hall, L., Johansson, P., Tärning, B., Sikström, S., & Deutgen, T. (2010). Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea. Cognition, 117(1), 54-61
    Replication in a supermarket with taste and smell choices.
  3. Hall, L., Johansson, P., & Strandberg, T. (2012). Lifting the veil of morality: Choice blindness and attitude reversals on a self-transforming survey. PLoS ONE, 7(9), e45457
    Participants defended moral positions opposite to those they had marked.
  4. Hall, L., Strandberg, T., Pärnamets, P., Lind, A., Tärning, B., & Johansson, P. (2013). How the polls can be both spot on and dead wrong: Using choice blindness to shift political attitudes and voter intentions. PLoS ONE, 8(4), e60554
    The Swedish election study: altered summaries of voters' own answers shifted attitudes and stated voting intention.
  5. Sagana, A., Sauerland, M., & Merckelbach, H. (2013). Witnesses' blindness for their own facial recognition decisions: A field study. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(6), 807-813
    Choice blindness for eyewitness identification decisions.
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