The phylogenetic roots of cognitive dissonance.

West, Samantha; Jett, Stephanie E.; Beckman, Tamra; Vonk, Jennifer

doi:10.1037/a0019932

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…As emphasized earlier [10], this likely results from choice-induced preference, a cognitive bias shared by humans [43], [44] and monkeys, whether capuchins [45], [46], or macaques [47]. Subjects value an option more when they select it, regardless of its outcome.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Model-Observer Similarity, Error Modeling and Social Learning in Rhesus Macaques

2014

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Monkeys readily learn to discriminate between rewarded and unrewarded items or actions by observing their conspecifics. However, they do not systematically learn from humans. Understanding what makes human-to-monkey transmission of knowledge work or fail could help identify mediators and moderators of social learning that operate regardless of language or culture, and transcend inter-species differences. Do monkeys fail to learn when human models show a behavior too dissimilar from the animals’ own, or when they show a faultless performance devoid of error? To address this question, six rhesus macaques trained to find which object within a pair concealed a food reward were successively tested with three models: a familiar conspecific, a ‘stimulus-enhancing’ human actively drawing the animal’s attention to one object of the pair without actually performing the task, and a ‘monkey-like’ human performing the task in the same way as the monkey model did. Reward was manipulated to ensure that all models showed equal proportions of errors and successes. The ‘monkey-like’ human model improved the animals’ subsequent object discrimination learning as much as a conspecific did, whereas the ‘stimulus-enhancing’ human model tended on the contrary to retard learning. Modeling errors rather than successes optimized learning from the monkey and ‘monkey-like’ models, while exacerbating the adverse effect of the ‘stimulus-enhancing’ model. These findings identify error modeling as a moderator of social learning in monkeys that amplifies the models’ influence, whether beneficial or detrimental. By contrast, model-observer similarity in behavior emerged as a mediator of social learning, that is, a prerequisite for a model to work in the first place. The latter finding suggests that, as preverbal infants, macaques need to perceive the model as ‘like-me’ and that, once this condition is fulfilled, any agent can become an effective model.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Model-Observer Similarity, Error Modeling and Social Learning in Rhesus Macaques

2014

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“…Despite merely having the illusion of choice, capuchins still showed the same choice-induced preference changes, which suggests that preexisting preferences between the two options could not account for the monkeys’ performance (for a discussion of this alternative explanation, see Chen & Risen 2009). In addition, West and colleagues (2010) demonstrated that these choice-induced preference changes may be specific to primate psychology: Although West and colleagues replicated the basic preference change effect with several different primate species, they found no such choice-induced shifts in several other nonprimate mammal and bird species. Taken together, these findings of choice-induced preference changes in primates provide important hints about the mechanisms that may underlie these preference changes in humans.…”

Section: Do Humans Have Unique Mechanisms For Decision Making?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolutionary Roots of Human Decision Making

Santos

Rosati

2015

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

203

130

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Humans exhibit a suite of biases when making economic decisions. We review recent research on the origins of human decision making by examining whether similar choice biases are seen in nonhuman primates, our closest phylogenetic relatives. We propose that comparative studies can provide insight into four major questions about the nature of human choice biases that cannot be addressed by studies of our species alone. First, research with other primates can address the evolution of human choice biases and identify shared versus human-unique tendencies in decision making. Second, primate studies can constrain hypotheses about the psychological mechanisms underlying such biases. Third, comparisons of closely related species can identify when distinct mechanisms underlie related biases by examining evolutionary dissociations in choice strategies. Finally, comparative work can provide insight into the biological rationality of economically irrational preferences.

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“…The original paper describing the methodological flaw was made available to the public as a working paper in 2008 and attracted the attention of researchers (see Chen and Risen, 2009; Sagarin and Skowronski, 2009a,b). However, despite the fact that their critique could potentially undermine the conclusions of any study that uses the paradigm, behavioral, and neuroimaging studies using the paradigm continue to be published without addressing the critique (Sharot et al, 2009, 2010a; Coppin et al, 2010, 2012; Imada and Kitayama, 2010; Lee and Schwarz, 2010; West et al, 2010; Harmon-Jones et al, 2011; Jarcho et al, 2011; Qin et al, 2011; Kimel et al, 2012; Kitayama et al, 2013). Furthermore, although some researchers have already provided evidence for the existence of choice-included preference change using new paradigms or modifications of the free-choice paradigm, some of them are not sufficiently compelling, as detailed later.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice-Induced Preference Change in the Free-Choice Paradigm: A Critical Methodological Review

Izuma¹,

Murayama²

2013

Front. Psychology

103

130

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Choices not only reflect our preference, but they also affect our behavior. The phenomenon of choice-induced preference change has been of interest to cognitive dissonance researchers in social psychology, and more recently, it has attracted the attention of researchers in economics and neuroscience. Preference modulation after the mere act of making a choice has been repeatedly demonstrated over the last 50 years by an experimental paradigm called the “free-choice paradigm.” However, Chen and Risen (2010) pointed out a serious methodological flaw in this paradigm, arguing that evidence for choice-induced preference change is still insufficient. Despite the flaw, studies using the traditional free-choice paradigm continue to be published without addressing the criticism. Here, aiming to draw more attention to this issue, we briefly explain the methodological problem, and then describe simple simulation studies that illustrate how the free-choice paradigm produces a systematic pattern of preference change consistent with cognitive dissonance, even without any change in true preference. Our stimulation also shows how a different level of noise in each phase of the free-choice paradigm independently contributes to the magnitude of artificial preference change. Furthermore, we review ways of addressing the critique and provide a meta-analysis to show the effect size of choice-induced preference change after addressing the critique. Finally, we review and discuss, based on the results of the stimulation studies, how the criticism affects our interpretation of past findings generated from the free-choice paradigm. We conclude that the use of the conventional free-choice paradigm should be avoided in future research and the validity of past findings from studies using this paradigm should be empirically re-established.

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The phylogenetic roots of cognitive dissonance.

Cited by 20 publications

References 28 publications

Model-Observer Similarity, Error Modeling and Social Learning in Rhesus Macaques

Model-Observer Similarity, Error Modeling and Social Learning in Rhesus Macaques

The Evolutionary Roots of Human Decision Making

Choice-Induced Preference Change in the Free-Choice Paradigm: A Critical Methodological Review

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