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decision making
Your confidence in a decision comes after the act.
Post-decision dissonance reduction causes people to retroactively inflate the value of a choice they just made.
Once a commitment is irreversible, the human mind systematically devalues the options it rejected and magnifies the positives of the selected path. This is not a logical assessment, but an automatic mechanism to maintain emotional comfort with your own actions. By justifying the choice, you eliminate the mental discomfort of regret.
You often convince yourself you made the right decision long after the decision was already finalized.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Festinger, 1957
- What the check found
- While the effect is a foundational concept in cognitive dissonance theory established by Festinger (1957), modern critiques suggest the underlying measurement methods may inflate the results.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.