Choice Both Affects and Reflects Preferences

Abstract

The free-choice paradigm is a widely used paradigm in psychology. It has been used to show that after a choice between two similarly pleasant stimuli, the pleasantness of the chosen one tends to increase, whereas the pleasantness of the rejected one tends to decrease-a spreading of alternatives. However, the methodological validity of the free-choice paradigm to study choice-induced preference change has recently been seriously questioned [Chen, K. M., & Risen, J. L. (2010). How choice affects and reflects preferences: Revisiting the free-choice paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 573-594. doi:10.1037/a0020217]. According to this criticism, the classically reported spreading of alternatives between the first and second rating sessions cannot be unambiguously interpreted to reflect a true change in preferences and can be observed even for completely static preferences. Here, we used two measurement sequences, a classical Rating 1-choice-Rating 2 sequence and a control Rating 1-Rating 2-choice sequence, to disentangle the spreading of alternatives driven by the effect of choice from the artefactual effect highlighted by Chen and Risen. In two studies using different stimulus material (faces and odours), we find that choice has a robust modulatory impact on preferences for rejected odours, but not for chosen odours and not for faces.

Neural Mechanisms of Cognitive Dissonance (Revised): An EEG Study

“…2) replicate previous SoA findings using the free-choice paradigm (Izuma et al, 2010; Salti et al, 2014). Importantly, the efficiency of the control conditions for the free-choice paradigm is still debated (Coppin et al, 2014), and further investigation is needed. Therefore, the electrophysiological signature of cognitive dissonance during control conditions is marginally discussed in this paper.…”

How does the peak-end rule smell? Tracing hedonic experience with odours

“…Also, odours can be easily and precisely applied in a laboratory setting when using appropriate equipment (e.g. an olfactometer), and they have been used in numerous studies, including research on perceptual and decision-making processes (Coppin et al, 2014;Coppin, Delplanque, Porcherot, Cayeux, & Sander, 2012;Oud & Coppin, 2012). Because different odours can be combined into uninterrupted sequences at will, they lend themselves to a continuous presentation and hence increase the chance of a holistic evaluation.…”

Associative Self-Anchoring Interacts with Obtainability of Chosen Objects

“…However, it is important to note that in accordance with the consistency bias where past attitudes are incorrectly remembered to resemble present’s attitudes, participants’ reports suggest that they were not aware of the fact that their evaluations changed between the different evaluation tasks. Consistent with the fact that participants were not aware of altering their evaluations, preference change has been shown to be an implicit process ( Sharot et al, 2010 ; Jarcho et al, 2011 ; Coppin et al, 2012 , 2014 ), an idea further exemplified by studies conducted in monkeys, children and amnesic patients ( Lieberman et al, 2001 ; Egan et al, 2007 , 2010 ). Although some of the dissonance studies cited above suffered from the artifact raised by Chen and Risen (2010) and should be interpreted with caution, there is emerging evidence that the change in evaluation we observe might reflect a non-conscious mechanism serving important adaptive purposes.…”