The notion that past choices affect preferences is one of the most influential concepts of social psychology since its first report in the 50 s, and its theorization within the cognitive dissonance framework. In the free-choice paradigm (FCP) after choosing between two similarly rated items, subjects reevaluate chosen items as more attractive and rejected items as less attractive. However the relations prevailing between episodic memory and choice-induced preference change (CIPC) remain highly debated: is this phenomenon dependent or independent from memory of past choices? We solve this theoretical debate by demonstrating that CIPC occurs exclusively for items which were correctly remembered as chosen or rejected during the choice stage. We used a combination of fMRI and intra-cranial electrophysiological recordings to reveal a modulation of left hippocampus activity, a hub of episodic memory retrieval, immediately before the occurrence of CIPC during item reevaluation. Finally, we show that contrarily to a previous influential report flawed by a statistical artifact, this phenomenon is absent in amnesic patients for forgotten items. These results demonstrate the dependence of cognitive dissonance on conscious episodic memory. This link between current preferences and previous choices suggests a homeostatic function of this regulative process, aiming at preserving subjective coherence.
While cognitive dissonance is an influential concept of social psychology, its relations with consciousness and episodic memory remain strongly debated. We recently used the free-choice paradigm (FCP) to demonstrate the crucial role of conscious memory of previous choices on choice-induced preference change (CIPC). After choosing between two similarly rated items, subjects reevaluated chosen items as more attractive, and rejected items as less attractive. However such a CIPC was present exclusively for items that were correctly remembered as chosen or rejected during the choice stage, both in healthy controls and in amnesic patients. In the present work, we show that CIPC can be modulated by suggestive quotes promoting self-coherence or self-incoherence. In addition to the crucial role of memory of previous choices, we discovered that memory of the suggestive quotes was correlated to the modulation of CIPC. Taken together these results suggest that CIPC reflects a dynamic homeostatic regulation of self-coherence.
To establish the temporal dynamics of hypnotic responding, we composed an Attentional Blink paradigm in which both the first and second targets were faces, either expressing neutral or angry emotions. We then suppressed the emotional advantage of angry faces by means of a “hypnotic numbing” suggestion. Hypnosis attenuated only the emotional salience of the second target (T2), suggesting that hypnosis’ effects were time and resource dependent. Additionally, we found that hypnosis fostered changes in the attentional task-set of all participants, regardless of their hypnotizability. By implementing drift-diffusion decision modelling, we found that hypnosis lowered decision thresholds. These results portray hypnotic responding as a two-tiered process: first, hypnosis alters the attentional task-set, then, provided processing and response preparation are not interrupted, a hypnotic response based on this altered task-set is produced through late cognitive control strategies dependent on hypnotic susceptibility.
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