Transient Value Refinements During Deliberation Facilitate Choice

After deciding among options, decision-makers tend to increase their evaluations of the chosen options and decrease their evaluations of the rejected options, resulting in a spreading of alternatives (SoA). There has been a long-standing debate as to whether SoA results from postchoice cognitive dis...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Decision (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2024-04, Vol.11 (2), p.303-319
Main Authors: Lee, Douglas G., Holyoak, Keith J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Choice Behavior
Decision Making
Female
Human
Male
Preferences
Self-Confidence
Values
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:After deciding among options, decision-makers tend to increase their evaluations of the chosen options and decrease their evaluations of the rejected options, resulting in a spreading of alternatives (SoA). There has been a long-standing debate as to whether SoA results from postchoice cognitive dissonance reduction or self-consistency augmentation, or whether it is related to processes that are instrumental in reaching a decision (or both). Here, we introduce a novel procedure that measures SoA implicitly during the process of subjective value-based decision-making. During the choice task, participants simultaneously provided value ratings for both options on offer on each trial, but before explicitly reporting their choices. The results clearly demonstrate that SoA does not occur only after choices have been reported. Furthermore, SoA seems to be instrumental to the choice process: It is associated with higher choice consistency, higher confidence, and lower response time. The SoA generated during choice deliberation is partially transient in nature, regressing toward baseline shortly afterward, but lingering at an intermediate level.
ISSN:2325-9965
2325-9973
DOI:10.1037/dec0000215