Choice-supportive bias or post-purchase rationalization is the tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected and/or to demote the forgone options. [1] It is part of cognitive science, and is a distinct cognitive bias that occurs once a decision is made. For example, if a person chooses option A instead of option B, they are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying or ascribing new negative faults to option B. Conversely, they are also likely to notice and amplify the advantages of option A and not notice or de-emphasize those of option B.
What is remembered about a decision can be as important as the decision itself, especially in determining how much regret or satisfaction one experiences. [2] Research indicates that the process of making and remembering choices yields memories that tend to be distorted in predictable ways. [2]
In cognitive science, one predictable way that memories of choice options are distorted is that positive aspects tend to be remembered as part of the chosen option, whether or not they originally were part of that option, and negative aspects tend to be remembered as part of rejected options. [2] Once an action has been taken, the ways in which we evaluate the effectiveness of what we did may be biased. [3] It is believed this may influence our future decision-making. These biases may be stored as memories, which are attributions that we make about our mental experiences based on their subjective qualities, our prior knowledge and beliefs, our motives and goals, and the social context. True and false memories arise by the same mechanism because when the brain processes and stores information, it cannot tell the difference where they came from. [4]
The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were. In this respect, people tend to over attribute positive features to options they chose and negative features to options not chosen. [2]
Experiments in cognitive science and social psychology have revealed a wide variety of biases in areas such as statistical reasoning, social attribution, and memory. [3]
Choice-supportive memory distortion is thought to occur during the time of memory retrieval and was the result of the belief that, "I chose this option, therefore it must have been the better option." [5] Essentially, after a choice is made people tend to adjust their attitudes to be consistent with, the decision they have already made. [6] [2] [7] It is also possible that choice-supportive memories arise because an individual is only paying attention to certain pieces of information when making a decision or to post-choice cognitive dissonance. [5] In addition, biases can also arise because they are closely related to the high level cognitive operations and complex social interactions. [8]
Memory distortions may sometimes serve a purpose because it may be in our interest to not remember some details of an event or to forget others altogether. [9]
The objective of a choice is generally to pick the best option. Thus, after making a choice, a person is likely to maintain the belief that the chosen option was better than the options rejected. Every choice has an upside and a downside. The process of making a decision mostly relies upon previous experiences. Therefore, a person will remember not only the decision made but also the reasoning behind making that decision.
Motivation may also play a role in this process because when a person remembers the option that they chose as being the best option, it should help reduce regret about their choice. This may represent a positive illusion that promotes well-being.
There are cases where an individual is not always in control of which options are received. People often end up with options that were not chosen but, instead were assigned by others, such as job assignments made by bosses, course instructors assigned by a registrar, or vacation spots selected by other family members. [10] However, being assigned (random or not) to an option leads to a different set of cognitions and memory attributions that tend to favor the alternative (non-received) option and may emphasize regret and disappointment. [11]
Misattribution is a well-known commission error supported by researchers. [1] [13] It results in a type of choice-supportive bias when information is attributed to the wrong source. [1] Consequently, the positive attributes of the forgone option are remembered as the positive attributes of the chosen option, or the negative attributes of the chosen option are remembered as the negative attributes of the foregone option. For example, if one had to choose between two pairs of trainers and the chosen pair fitted slightly tighter and the forgone option fitted perfectly, the chosen pair would be remembered as fitting perfectly whereas the forgone pair would be remembered as being slightly tighter (although this was not the case in reality)
While misattribution presupposes correct encoding and recall of the information in relation to a person's decision, the source of the information remains unclear or incorrect. Therefore it is not to be mistaken with completely false information. [1]
Fact distortion results in a type of choice-supportive bias when the facts belonging to the chosen option are remembered in a distorted manner. [1] The distortion refers to the objective values and/or features of the chosen option being misremembered in a more preferential way to their actual values. Alternatively, the forgone option can be misremembered as being significantly less preferential then their actual values. [14] An example of fact distortion would be if you have to choose between buying one out of two cars which can both drive at a maximum speed of 130 mph, the foregone car would be remembered with a maximum speed of 100 mph, whereas the chosen car will be remembered with a maximum speed of 160 mph. Consequently, the facts concerning both cars have been distorted.
There are varieties of fact distortion that remain contested throughout the literature; as a result, there is no consensus on how it works. Some authors argue that the distortion mainly occurs when the favoured option is misremembered more preferentially, whereas other researchers argue that memory distortion does not occur or is only likely to take place during the post-decision stage. [15] Overall, some studies have argued that holding the belief that distortion cannot take place (as soon as the decision is made) means that facts cannot be distorted. [1]
Selective forgetting results in a form of choice-supportive bias when information is selectively forgotten. [1] In this respect, the positive attributes of the chosen option and the negative attributes of the forgone option are retained in memory at a higher rate and the alternatives are displaced from memory at a faster rate. An example of selective forgetting would be correctly remembering that your chosen pair of trainers were aesthetically pleasing, but forgetting that they were slightly tight. This omission error may be related to the limited capacity of memory overtime, otherwise known as transience. [8]
False memory in the context of choice-supportive biases is when items that were not part of the original decision are remembered as being presented. If these entirely new items are positive, they will be remembered as belonging to the chosen option and if they are negative, they will be remembered as belonging to the forgone option. [1] For example, a chosen pair of shoes might be remembered as good for running, although there was no information presented in respect to the shoes running capabilities.
This type of error is fundamentally different to the other types of misremembering in choice-supportive bias because it is not due to correct encoding and later confusion, but it is due to a completely false memory. This type of bias means that falsely remembered events can affect future attitudes and possibly decision-making. [16]
Alignability in the context of choice-supportive bias refers to whether both options have directly comparable features. For example, an alignable characteristic could be whether both options can be measured in centimetres. In the context of decision making, alignability can influence choices or the ability to make a similarity judgement of a potential option. [17] The alignment process enables a person to draw similarities and difference which impact their choice-supportive biases. Research to support this can be displayed by the following example: when given a choice between two brands of popcorn, participants were more likely to choose the one with the superior alignable differences, such as “pops in its own bag” compared with “requires a microwaveable bowl” than the one with superior non-alignable differences, such as “not likely to burn” compared with those containing “some citric acid" [17] [18]
The extent of the delay between encoding is a potential factor that could affect choice-supportive bias. If there is a larger delay between encoding (i.e. viewing the information about the options) and retrieval (i.e. memory tests) it is likely to result in more biased choices rather than the impact of the actual choice on choice-supportive bias. [1] Some studies have found that the extent of false memories increases over time. Whereas other researchers have shown that a 2-day delay between making choices and assessment of memory resulted in reasonably high (86%) recognition accuracy. [2] [12] Therefore, these findings indicate that the influence of delays on choice-supportive bias remain varied, and the influence of delays could affect different types of memory distortions differently. [1]
This factor refers to a person's perceived decisions concerning the choices they made, more specifically this includes memories that have been falsified to reflect a selected choice that the person did not actually make. Research illustrates that people favour the options they think they have chosen and remember the attributes of their "chosen choice" more vividly and favourably. [12] Essentially, this influences assesses how one believes the choices they made affects their subsequent memories. [12] As a result, people's memories are biased in favour of the option they thought they had selected rather than their actual choices. [12]
Individual differences in choice-supportive bias affect the way a person remembers their options and the way they make decisions and therefore it may influence the degree to which a person engages in choice-supportive bias. Factors such as age and individual characteristics can influence an individual's cognitive abilities, personality and thus their overall choice-supportive biases. [1] For example, it has been observed by correlations that people with better performance in tests of frontal or executive functioning were less prone to choice-supportive memory. [2]
People's conception of who they are, can be shaped by the memories of the choices they make; the college favored over the one renounced, the job chosen over the one rejected, the candidate elected instead of another one not selected. [19] Memories of chosen as well as forgone alternatives can affect one's sense of well-being. Regret for options not taken can cast a shadow, whereas satisfaction at having made the right choice can make a good outcome seem even better. [19]
Choice-supportive bias often results in memories that depict the self in an overly favorable light. In general, cognitive biases loosen our grasp on reality because the line between reality and fantasy can become fuzzy if one's brain has failed to remember a particular event. [8] Positive illusions are generally mild and are important contributors to our sense of well being. However, we all need to be aware that they do exist as part of human nature. [8]
Human beings are blessed with having an intelligent and complex mind, which allows us to remember our past, be able to optimize the present, and plan for the future. Remembering involves a complex interaction between the current environment, what one expects to remember, and what is retained from the past. [8] The mechanisms of the brain that allow memory storage and retrieval serves us well most of the time, but occasionally gets us into trouble.
There is now abundant evidence that memory content can undergo systematic changes. After some period of time and if the memory is not used often, it may become forgotten.
There is extensive evidence that the amygdala is involved in effectively influencing memory. [21] Emotional arousal, usually fear based, activates the amygdala and results in the modulation of memory storage occurring in other brain regions. The forebrain is one of the targets of the amygdala. The forebrain receives input from amygdala and calculates the emotional significance of the stimulus, generates an emotional response, and transmits it to cerebral cortex. This can alter the way neurons respond to future input, and therefore cognitive biases, such as choice-supportive bias can influence future decisions.
Effects of stress-related hormones, such as epinephrine and glucocorticoids are mediated by influences involving the amygdala. [21] It has been shown in experiments with rats that when they are given systemic injections of epinephrine while being trained to perform a task, they show an enhanced memory of performing the task. In effect the stronger the emotion that is tied to the memory, the more likely the individual is to remember. Therefore, if the memory is stored and retrieved properly it is less likely to be distorted.
A PET scan or fMRI can be used to identify different regions of the brain that are activated during specific memory retrieval.
Studies now show that as people age, their process of memory retrieval changes. Although general memory problems are common to everyone because no memory is perfectly accurate, older adults are more likely than younger adults to show choice-supportive biases.
Normal aging may be accompanied by neuropathy in the frontal brain regions. Frontal regions help people encode or use specific memorial attributes to make source judgments, controls personality and the ability to plan for events. These areas can attribute to memory distortions and regulating emotion.
In general, older adults are more likely to remember emotional aspects of situations than are younger adults. For example, on a memory characteristic questionnaire, older adults rated remembered events as having more associated thoughts and feelings than did younger adults. As a person ages, regulating personal emotion becomes a higher priority, whereas knowledge acquisition becomes less of a powerful motive. Therefore, choice-supportive bias would arise because their focus was on how they felt about the choice rather than on the factual details of the options. Studies have shown that when younger adults are encouraged to remember the emotional aspect of a choice, they are more likely to show choice-supportive bias. This may be related to older adults' greater tendency to show a positivity effect in memory.
Older adults rely more than younger adults on categorical or general knowledge about an event to recognize particular elements from the event. [2] Older adults are also less likely to correctly remember contextual features of events, such as their color or location. This may be because older adults remember (or rely on) fewer source identifying characteristics than the young. Consequently, older adults must more often guess or base a response on less specific information, such as familiarity. [23] As a result, if they can't remember something, they are more likely to fill in the missing gaps with things that are familiar to them. [8]
Older adults are more reliant on gist-based retrieval. A number of studies suggest that using stereotypes or general knowledge to help remember an event is less cognitively demanding than relying on other types of memorial information and thus might require less reflective activity. This shift towards gist-based processes might occur as a compensation for age decrements in verbatim memory. [24]
The episodic memory and inhibition accounts of age-related increases in false memories. Inhibition of a memory may be related to an individual's hearing capacity and attention span. If the person cannot hear what is going on around them or is not paying much attention, the memory cannot be properly stored and therefore cannot be accurately retrieved.
Henkel and Mather tested the role of beliefs at the time of retrieval about which option was chosen by giving participants several hypothetical choices like deciding between two used cars. [5] After making several choices, participants left and were asked to return a week later. At that point, Henkel and Mather reminded them which option they had chosen for each choice and gave them a list of the features of the two options; some new positive and negative features were mixed in with the old features. Next, participants were asked to indicate whether each option was new, had been associated with the option they chose, or had been associated with the option they rejected. Participants favored whichever option Henkel and Mather had told them they had chosen in their memories. [5] These findings show that beliefs at the time of retrieval about which option was chosen shape both which features are attributed to the options and how vividly they are remembered.
One study looked at the accuracy and distortion in memory for high school grades. The relation between accuracy and distortion of autobiographical memory content was examined by verifying 3,220 high school grades recalled by 99 freshman college students. [20] It was shown that most errors inflated the actual high school grade, meaning that these distortions are attributed to memory reconstructions in a positive and emotionally gratifying direction. In addition, their findings indicate that the process of distortion does not cause the actual unpleasant memory loss of getting the bad grade. [20] This is because there was no correlation found between the percentage of accuracy recall and the degree of asymmetry, or distortion. This shows that the distortion in memories of high school grades arises after the content has been forgotten by another mechanism.
Many similar studies have been performed, such as a fifty-year study of remembering college grades. In this study one to 54 years after graduating, 276 alumni correctly recalled 3,025 of 3,967 college grades. The number of omission errors increased with the retention interval and better students made fewer errors. [25] The accuracy of recall increased with confidence in recall. Eighty-one percent of errors of commission inflated the actual grade. These data suggested that distortions occur soon after graduation, remain constant during the retention interval, and are greater for better students and for courses students enjoyed most. Therefore, sometime in between when the memory is stored and when it is retrieved some time later, the distortion may arise. [25]
Researchers have used written scenarios in which participants are asked to make a choice between two options. Later, on a memory test, participants are given a list of positive and negative features, some of which were in the scenario and some of which are new. A choice-supportive bias is seen when both correct and incorrect attributions tend to favor the chosen option, with positive features more likely to be attributed to the chosen option and negative features to the rejected option.
The Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm (DRM) consists of a participant listening to an experimenter read lists of thematically related words (e.g. table, couch, lamp, desk); then after some period of time the experimenter will ask if a word was presented in the list. Participants often report that related but non-presented words (e.g. chair) were included in the encoding series, essentially suggesting that they 'heard' the experimenter say these non-presented words (or critical lures). Incorrect 'yes' responses to critical lures, often referred to as false memories, are remarkably high under standard DRM conditions. [26]
The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. Choice-supportive bias is potentially related to the aspect of cognitive dissonance explored by Jack Brehm (1956) as postdecisional dissonance. Within the context of cognitive dissonance, choice-supportive bias would be seen as reducing the conflict between "I prefer X" and "I have committed to Y".
A study of the Lady Macbeth effect showed reduced choice-supportive bias by having participants engage in washing. [27] However, the underlying general effect has not replicated in larger studies [28] [29]
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
A flashbulb memory is a vivid, long-lasting memory about a surprising or shocking event that has happened in the past.
Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they were.
Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. It appears to be the result of the psychological need to satisfy one's ego and to be advantageous for memory consolidation. Research has shown that experiences, ideas, and beliefs are more easily recalled when they match one's own, causing an egocentric outlook. Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly first identified this cognitive bias in their 1979 paper, "Egocentric biases in availability and attribution". Egocentric bias is referred to by most psychologists as a general umbrella term under which other related phenomena fall.
Emotional reasoning is a cognitive process by which an individual concludes that their emotional reaction proves something is true, despite contrary empirical evidence. Emotional reasoning creates an 'emotional truth', which may be in direct conflict with the inverse 'perceptional truth'. It can create feelings of anxiety, fear, and apprehension in existing stressful situations, and as such, is often associated with or triggered by panic disorder or anxiety disorder. For example, even though a spouse has shown only devotion, a person using emotional reasoning might conclude, "I know my spouse is being unfaithful because I feel jealous."
Buyer's remorse is the sense of regret after having made a purchase. It is frequently associated with the purchase of an expensive item such as a vehicle or real estate.
Age-related memory loss, sometimes described as "normal aging", is qualitatively different from memory loss associated with types of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease, and is believed to have a different brain mechanism.
Acquiescence bias, also known as agreement bias, is a category of response bias common to survey research in which respondents have a tendency to select a positive response option or indicate a positive connotation disproportionately more frequently. Respondents do so without considering the content of the question or their 'true' preference. Acquiescence is sometimes referred to as "yea-saying" and is the tendency of a respondent to agree with a statement when in doubt. Questions affected by acquiescence bias take the following format: a stimulus in the form of a statement is presented, followed by 'agree/disagree,' 'yes/no' or 'true/false' response options. For example, a respondent might be presented with the statement "gardening makes me feel happy," and would then be expected to select either 'agree' or 'disagree.' Such question formats are favoured by both survey designers and respondents because they are straightforward to produce and respond to. The bias is particularly prevalent in the case of surveys or questionnaires that employ truisms as the stimuli, such as: "It is better to give than to receive" or "Never a lender nor a borrower be". Acquiescence bias can introduce systematic errors that affect the validity of research by confounding attitudes and behaviours with the general tendency to agree, which can result in misguided inference. Research suggests that the proportion of respondents who carry out this behaviour is between 10% and 20%.
A source-monitoring error is a type of memory error where the source of a memory is incorrectly attributed to some specific recollected experience. For example, individuals may learn about a current event from a friend, but later report having learned about it on the local news, thus reflecting an incorrect source attribution. This error occurs when normal perceptual and reflective processes are disrupted, either by limited encoding of source information or by disruption to the judgment processes used in source-monitoring. Depression, high stress levels and damage to relevant brain areas are examples of factors that can cause such disruption and hence source-monitoring errors.
Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander or victim gives in the courtroom, describing what that person observed that occurred during the specific incident under investigation. Ideally this recollection of events is detailed; however, this is not always the case. This recollection is used as evidence to show what happened from a witness' point of view. Memory recall has been considered a credible source in the past, but has recently come under attack as forensics can now support psychologists in their claim that memories and individual perceptions can be unreliable, manipulated, and biased. As a result of this, many countries, and states within the United States, are now attempting to make changes in how eyewitness testimony is presented in court. Eyewitness testimony is a specialized focus within cognitive psychology.
The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.
Autobiographical memory (AM) is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic and semantic memory. It is thus a type of explicit memory.
Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. There are six main emotions: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, Joy, and Surprise. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.
Memory conformity, also known as social contagion of memory, refers to the phenomenon where memories or information reported by others influences an individual and is incorporated into the individual's memory. Memory conformity is a memory error due to both social influences and cognitive mechanisms. Social contamination of false memory can be exemplified in prominent situations involving social interactions, such as eyewitness testimony. Research on memory conformity has revealed that such suggestibility and errors with source monitoring has far reaching consequences, with important legal and social implications.
Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) is a theory of cognition originally proposed by Valerie F. Reyna and Charles Brainerd that draws upon dual-trace conceptions to predict and explain cognitive phenomena, particularly in memory and reasoning. The theory has been used in areas such as cognitive psychology, human development, and social psychology to explain, for instance, false memory and its development, probability judgments, medical decision making, risk perception and estimation, and biases and fallacies in decision making.
Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other witnessed dramatic event. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they are required to remember the face of their perpetrator, for example. However, the accuracy of eyewitness memories is sometimes questioned because there are many factors that can act during encoding and retrieval of the witnessed event which may adversely affect the creation and maintenance of the memory for the event. Experts have found evidence to suggest that eyewitness memory is fallible.
In psychology, confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage or a specific subset of dementias. While still an area of ongoing research, the basal forebrain is implicated in the phenomenon of confabulation. People who confabulate present with incorrect memories ranging from subtle inaccuracies to surreal fabrications, and may include confusion or distortion in the temporal framing of memories. In general, they are very confident about their recollections, even when challenged with contradictory evidence.
The memory system plays a key role in the decision-making process because individuals constantly choose among alternative options. Due to the volume of decisions made, much of the decision-making process is unconscious and automatic. Information about how a decision is made is remembered and used for future decisions. Memory is susceptible to biases, but it is integral to the formation of preferences and to differentiation between choices.
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