Why is your choice seems to be the best, even if it is not

You decide to buy a new smartphone, selected two suitable, but not sure which one to choose. After evaluating all the pros and cons, you finally choose one and buy it.

Now he likes you more than half an hour ago, when you looked dubiously at both options. And in the future you may become give preference to the same brand, even if the other will offer the best of the characteristics of the product for the same money.

This distortion is made guilty choice - the psychological effect that discovered over 60 years ago. And since then, its existence has been repeatedly confirmed.

What is the essence of distortion

For the first time observed a distortion of the choicePostdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives experiment with appliances. Students were asked to assess different models, and then choose to gift one of the devices. After 20 minutes they again asked to evaluate all the techniques.

And this time the devices that they have chosen a gift, received a flattering characteristics than in the beginning of the test.

The author of experiment Professor Jack Brehm (Jack W. Brehm) suggested that this is due to cognitive dissonance. After selecting a person overcome doubtsBecause the selected items also have dignity and have rejected - benefits. He feels psychological discomfort, afraid that he chose the wrong thing. To get rid of unpleasant feelings, the person seeking confirmation that everything was done correctly. And, of course, he finds it.

And the morePostdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives. the similarities between the proposed options, the greater the dissonance and the more a person likes their choice.

The distortion of the choice made was observed in various experimentsPostdecision dissonance at post time.. There was even carried out the experience with people suffering from amnesia. They do not remember the first part of the experiment, but I still have evaluated selected last thing better than anyone else. You can choose from the children and even a rhesus monkey, and always observed the same thing.

Participants always preferred to that chosen for the first time.

This works even when there is no real benefit and changes the brain's response to choices and alternatives.

As an option changes the brain's response

In one studyHow choice reveals, and shapes, expected hedonic outcome participants were asked to choose where they want to go on vacation, and track activity of the brain at the time of the decision and after the MRI. The choice was purely hypothetical: the participants were not going to give a ticket, and they knew it.

It turned out that after selecting the reaction of people to the location change. When they were a vacation in the selected location, increases the activity of the caudate nucleus. This area of ​​the brain that is activated when a person is something good in the future. Rejected by the location of such a response is not caused.

Why this may be a problem

There is nothing wrong in the fact that you like your choice. It's a good thing: you are not plagued by doubt and regret.

The problem arises at the moment when you refuse to accept that your choice may be something worse.

This brand loyalty that can not produce decent food, stuck in destructive relationshipWork on a specialty, which was originally chosen incorrectly.

Just acknowledge the fact that the rejected items, specialty, relationships, too, has its advantages, and have chosen you - flaws. This will help you to give up belief "its a priori better than another's" and not hold on to something that needs to change.