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choice blindness
You would not notice if your life changed suddenly.
A 2005 experiment demonstrated that people fail to identify when their expressed preferences are switched by an experimenter.
Participants were shown two photographs and asked to choose the more attractive one, then given a reason; the researchers then secretly swapped the photos. Most participants accepted the new photo as their own pick and provided an explanation for why they preferred it. You are better at justifying your choices than you are at remembering them.
You invent reasons for decisions you never actually made.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Johansson, Hall, Sikström, and Olsson (2005)
- What the check found
- This is a well-replicated finding in psychology, specifically regarding the 'choice blindness' paradigm first published by Johansson et al. in Science (2005).
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.