Resist or Give in to an Alternative: Post-Decisional Evaluations of Cost, Value and Regret in the Choice

Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis of post-decisional evaluations with reference to a choice made by the subject between an option with an antecedent that had a pleasurable finality while the alternative option was orientated respectively to the undertaking something useful, to fulfilling an obligation, or to the respect of a prior commitment with others. The study focalizes on a particular condition of the subject's awareness; that is to say that the decision was made with a will to resist to the alternative option, or the knowledge that he has substantially chosen to succumb to the pressure exercised by the alternative option. The study showed such an awareness condition had a significant effect on fundamental judgments that accompany and follow the decisional act, i.e. the rating of the cost of the choice, the value attributed to the choice, the regret associated to the option renounced by the subject.

Leave to fight another day: Having the option to switch promotes a persistence trade-off.

“…This may be a reason why switching can be motivating in goal pursuit (Lewin et al, 1944, as cited in Stutzer & Henne, 2014). It would also be fruitful to directly test in real-world studies an alternative dissonance-reduction explanation for why switching is motivating—namely that people who switch may potentially increase their commitment toward the superordinate goal, and hence be even more motivated to find various means to attain it (Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Diotaiuti et al, 2020).…”

“…When faced with a challenging problem, having the option to switch may reduce the expectancy and actual experience of failure, and maintain people's motivation to continue persisting on the overall task. From another perspective, after people have chosen to switch, they could be even more committed to striving toward their long-term goal, to justify their original decision to switch and continue working on problems, instead of abandoning the goal when they encountered challenge (Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Diotaiuti et al, 2020).…”

The use of the Decision Regret Scale in non-clinical contexts

“…In the framework of our study, the decisional conflict was rather traced back to the tension that can be generated by choices between alternatives pursuing different goals in the given situation (personal gain, personal pleasure and satisfaction, moral obligation, social expectation). A preliminary presentation of this approach was illustrated in a previous study by Diotaiuti et al (2020a) .…”

“…The person was asked to choose and indicate what he or she was likely to do in that situation. The development of the scenarios was done considering the previous contributions of Jonassen (2012) and Diotaiuti et al (2020a) .…”