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

Keise Izuma · Kou Murayama

113 citations0/0 files storedFrontiers in Psychology

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Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Social and Intergroup Psychology Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies

Abstract

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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References

1957A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance 2017A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance 1967Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena.1996Meta-analysis of experiments with matched groups or repeated measures designs.2005Failure to Detect Mismatches Between Intention and Outcome in a Simple Decision Task 1993Self-image resilience and dissonance: The role of affirmational resources.2007The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance 2010Neural correlates of cognitive dissonance and choice-induced preference change

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2013The neural basis of social influence and attitude change 2015Tolerant Paternalism: Pro-ethical Design as a Resolution of the Dilemma of Toleration 2013Choice Blindness and Preference Change: You Will Like This Paper Better If You (Believe You) Chose to Read It!2021Trading mental effort for confidence in the metacognitive control of value-based decision-making 2020Choosing what we like vs liking what we choose: How choice-induced preference change might actually be instrumental to decision-making

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