Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: In Today, we're going to be talking about choices and preferences,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to start off by looking at what
Speaker 1: I think is one of the most commonly misunderstood poems
Speaker 1: in English literature. It's a classic most Americans already know.
Speaker 1: You probably read it at some point in high school
Speaker 1: or even earlier. But it's an interesting poem because I
Speaker 1: think it usually gets interpreted to mean the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of what it actually means. All right, so this is
Speaker 1: the road not taken by Robert Frost. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to hear it again? Yeah? Yeah. This is always a
Speaker 1: pleasure to to hear or to read, even though it's
Speaker 1: one that I think we're all hit with le probably
Speaker 1: at the elementary school level. You know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I came to a greater appreciation of just the music
Speaker 1: of Robert Frost's poems as an adult than than I
Speaker 1: had for them when I was in school. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what changed there. Maybe I became grumpier
Speaker 1: and he was quite a grump himself. But but here
Speaker 1: we go. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and
Speaker 1: sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler.
Speaker 1: Long I stood and looked down one as far as
Speaker 1: I could to where it bent in the undergrowth, then
Speaker 1: took the other, as just as fair and having perhaps
Speaker 1: the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted, where
Speaker 1: though as for that, the passing there had warned them
Speaker 1: really about the same, And both that morning equally lay
Speaker 1: in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept
Speaker 1: the first for another day, yet, knowing how way leads
Speaker 1: onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back,
Speaker 1: I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere ages
Speaker 1: and ages. Hence, two roads diverged in a wood, and
Speaker 1: I I took the one less traveled by, and that
Speaker 1: has made all the difference. It's a beautiful bomb, it
Speaker 1: really is. But one of the things that that is
Speaker 1: really funny is that I think people usually interpret this
Speaker 1: poem as a sort of celebration of unique individuality and
Speaker 1: a celebration of going your own way. It's it's about
Speaker 1: how if you go boldly where others have not gone before,
Speaker 1: if you remain your unique, authentic self and choose the
Speaker 1: stranger path, you'll be rewarded with a life of unique meaning.
Speaker 1: But if you read it closely, I think the poem
Speaker 1: is meant to be a quite ironic sort of perry
Speaker 1: against exactly that way of thinking, because what happens in it, well,
Speaker 1: the speaker comes to a fork in the road. The
Speaker 1: speaker evaluates the for each path for a bit, at
Speaker 1: first thinks one is more traveled than the other, but
Speaker 1: then ultimately realize is that they're about the same. Then
Speaker 1: takes one road rather than the other for no major reason,
Speaker 1: they are in reality pretty much indistinguishable. Then thinks about
Speaker 1: how later in life he'll be claiming that he took
Speaker 1: the bold, untraveled path and that it changed his life,
Speaker 1: even though that wasn't true. Yeah, I feel like that's
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people miss out on in
Speaker 1: the poem, and I think a lot of it sometimes
Speaker 1: comes down to um the discussions about what is he
Speaker 1: actually talking about, And people get very wrapped up in that,
Speaker 1: like what was the choice? No, no, no, not the
Speaker 1: walk in the woods? What were you actually talking about? Frost,
Speaker 1: And then you you kind of end up ignoring the
Speaker 1: mechanics of it that you're talking about here, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think this is in a way a sort
Speaker 1: of an image poem that can be applied to many
Speaker 1: different types of choices one makes in life. Though I
Speaker 1: think it was literally inspired by him walking in the
Speaker 1: woods in New England. I'm not positive about that, but
Speaker 1: I think I've read that before. But yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: essentially a poem about a person who show was at
Speaker 1: random between two at the time pretty much indistinguishable options,
Speaker 1: and then comes up later with an ex post facto
Speaker 1: justification for his choice that it was the one made
Speaker 1: you made out of daring an authentic principle, and that
Speaker 1: it was deeply meaningful. And I really like this ironic
Speaker 1: interpretation because it raises a number of really interesting questions
Speaker 1: about human nature. So, first of all, isn't so much
Speaker 1: of life like this. We do make life changing decisions
Speaker 1: without knowing what the outcome will be. That the options
Speaker 1: in front of us might look indistinguishable. At the time
Speaker 1: you choose between two job opportunities, you can't really tell
Speaker 1: that one is necessarily better than the other. But then
Speaker 1: later you you will have had much of your life
Speaker 1: developed on the basis of whichever choice you made, and
Speaker 1: you have to come up with a narrative of your
Speaker 1: life story that makes sense of that choice in light
Speaker 1: of its later unpredictable significance. And I've viously, when you
Speaker 1: do this a lot of times you're gonna end up
Speaker 1: remembering the choice differently than it was in your mind
Speaker 1: when you made it. But then it also raises an
Speaker 1: interesting question about decision making. In the moment. When there
Speaker 1: are two options that are pretty much the same, we
Speaker 1: we often have to form a preference for one or
Speaker 1: the other. Now, there are plenty of cases where you
Speaker 1: can quite clearly see why you'd prefer one option over another.
Speaker 1: But in cases where that's not true, in the absence
Speaker 1: of the obvious superiority of one option over another, where
Speaker 1: do our preferences arise from? Why do we decide we
Speaker 1: like the left path rather than the right path if
Speaker 1: they look about the same. And for the purpose of
Speaker 1: today's episode, I want to expand beyond thinking about paths
Speaker 1: in the woods or big life decisions when it comes
Speaker 1: to the formation of any preferences, even extremely minor ones.
Speaker 1: You know you choose between two basically equivalent brands of
Speaker 1: blender at the store, why do we like the things
Speaker 1: that we like, Why do we have the preferences that
Speaker 1: we have. I'm probably gonna refer back to the Black
Speaker 1: Mirrorum episode the Black Mirror movie Band or Snatch a
Speaker 1: lot in this one. We did an episode about it
Speaker 1: last year, breaking down, you know, the nature of choice
Speaker 1: and free will and all. But like I instantly think
Speaker 1: about the early stages of Band or Snatch, where as
Speaker 1: you do this choose your own adventure media, you have
Speaker 1: to choose which cereal the main character is going to
Speaker 1: have for breakfast, and you know, ultimately it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter in the context of that of that story. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's it's more about just teaching the mechanics of
Speaker 1: choice within this um you know, computer narrative. But but
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you still have to exert a certain
Speaker 1: amount of mental energy to make that choice, to decide
Speaker 1: this serial over that one. And it's interesting how and
Speaker 1: this will tie into something we'll talk about in just
Speaker 1: a minute here. It's interesting how, at least for me,
Speaker 1: those early choices are kind of uncomfortable when you have
Speaker 1: to pick the cereal or you have to pick the
Speaker 1: record or some thing, and you don't have a natural
Speaker 1: strong preference one way or another. You've got this kind
Speaker 1: of weird anxiety that lingers after your choice, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, did I pick the right one? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: later on you can definitely make a call like Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the more dramatic choice, or well, this is
Speaker 1: the more this is the moral choice. But in choosing
Speaker 1: the two cereals, aside from maybe health concerns about the
Speaker 1: sugary cereal versus the other cereal, there's not as much
Speaker 1: to go on, right. So one of the main things
Speaker 1: I want to talk about in this episode today it
Speaker 1: is a really interesting fact that's been observed in a
Speaker 1: bunch of psychology studies over the years, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look at an early one from the nineteen fifties in
Speaker 1: just a minute. Here. We often assume that our preferences
Speaker 1: are what determine our choices. I pick this option instead
Speaker 1: of that because I like it better. But there is
Speaker 1: also significant evidence here's your AUNTI Metaboli, that our choices
Speaker 1: determine our preferences. I like this option because I picked it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of the big early studies here, a classic study
Speaker 1: that was in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six by Jack W. Brim is called
Speaker 1: post decision changes in the desirability of alternatives. So so again,
Speaker 1: this is by the American psychologist Jack W. Brim. Brim
Speaker 1: had been a student of the highly influential American social
Speaker 1: psychologist Leon Festinger, who is probably best known for developing
Speaker 1: the theory of cognitive dissonance. Now, this is a term
Speaker 1: you've probably all heard before, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know the experimental history surrounding it. So the simple
Speaker 1: version is that cognitive dissonance is the state of holding
Speaker 1: contradictory beliefs or values, or contradictions between your beliefs and
Speaker 1: your values and your actions, observing these contradictions within yourself simultaneously.
Speaker 1: So one example that's very often sided is knowing that
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes is harmful to your health, but smoking them anyway.
Speaker 1: But there there can be all kinds of cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: Our life is just full of of of cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: You know, you believe that your spouse is a good person,
Speaker 1: but you also know that they did something wrong. You
Speaker 1: know that they stole money out of the church collection
Speaker 1: plate or something. I think one that's probably very common
Speaker 1: appearances you love your child, but you really honestly don't
Speaker 1: like something they did. You know, you hate the way
Speaker 1: their crayon drawings look or something. Uh. And and when
Speaker 1: you're faced with this kind of contradiction, and of course
Speaker 1: we're faced with these kind of contradictions all the time, Uh,
Speaker 1: there is a problem that arises. What Festinger argued was
Speaker 1: that the state of cognitive dissonance is experienced internally as
Speaker 1: a profound stress, and people will do almost anything to
Speaker 1: alleviate that stress. And so this this remedial action to
Speaker 1: to alleviate the stress can take many forms, but it's
Speaker 1: just some finding some way to resolve the contradiction. Really,
Speaker 1: anything that reduces the internal perception of a contradiction between
Speaker 1: beliefs and values and actions. So if you're going back
Speaker 1: to the classic example of a person who smokes cigarettes
Speaker 1: but who is aware of the dangers of tobacco, they
Speaker 1: have options including they could they could change their actions
Speaker 1: so you can actually quit smoking. But of course that
Speaker 1: one's really hard, so a lot of people would instead
Speaker 1: go for one of the other options, which is change
Speaker 1: explicit beliefs. You can say, uh, yeah, what are these
Speaker 1: doctors know? You know, doctors are wrong about stuff all
Speaker 1: the time. I don't know, nobody ever really proved that
Speaker 1: smoking causes cancer. That's you know, the these studies are
Speaker 1: Can you really trust these studies? And on and on?
Speaker 1: You can you can just say no, I don't believe
Speaker 1: that the risks are real, or you could change other
Speaker 1: types of beliefs, such as changing underlying beliefs that are
Speaker 1: going unspoken, because if there's an internal conflict, if there's
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance arising over smoking, it relies on the unspoken
Speaker 1: premise that you want to live as long and be
Speaker 1: as healthy as possible. So you could relieve cognitive dissonance
Speaker 1: by explicitly rejecting that belief. And you've probably heard this
Speaker 1: before from people who say like, yeah, I smoke, Yeah
Speaker 1: it causes cancer, but hey, who wants to live forever.
Speaker 1: That's also you know, a great example of of short
Speaker 1: term versus long term thinking, right exactly. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there are ways of looking at things like I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, like you know, people are free to
Speaker 1: to make the decisions about their own health as they choose,
Speaker 1: But I think there is a legitimate school of thought
Speaker 1: that would say that, uh, making statements like that is
Speaker 1: basically a lack of compassion for your own future self. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but statements like that can help resolve the dissonance. Uh,
Speaker 1: there there are other things people do to People can
Speaker 1: think of compensatory reasons that they would keep smoking. So
Speaker 1: they might say, Okay, I I accept the fact that
Speaker 1: smoking is bad for health. I keep doing it, but
Speaker 1: I've got some like compensatory justification in my brain. I
Speaker 1: need to smoke in order to stay focused at work,
Speaker 1: or like I need to smoke in order to stay thin,
Speaker 1: or things like that. And so people have argued about
Speaker 1: how best to interpret cognitive dissonance theory, and and they've
Speaker 1: argued around the margins over the years. But it seems
Speaker 1: to me like cognitive dissonance is is pretty robust and
Speaker 1: a very lasting concept from from social psychology that explains
Speaker 1: a lot of our behaviors and cognitive processes. There have
Speaker 1: been a ton of different experiments that seem to support
Speaker 1: the idea of cognitive dissonance reduction is a major pressure
Speaker 1: driving our beliefs and behaviors. Just one I was reading
Speaker 1: about as a study by Festinger and Carl Smith from
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine that works something like this. So you
Speaker 1: have people perform something that they believe to be the
Speaker 1: actual bulk of the experiment. It's this like long, repetitive,
Speaker 1: extremely boring task. I don't remember exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: Is like, you know, you put these pegs in holes
Speaker 1: for an hour or something is mind numbingly boring, and
Speaker 1: then you pay the subjects after they're done with the
Speaker 1: experiment to tell the people who are going in to
Speaker 1: do it next that it's really fun and interesting. Uh
Speaker 1: so they're gonna be lying. They're gonna be openly saying
Speaker 1: something that they know not to be true. And Festinger
Speaker 1: and Carl Smith found something interesting, which is that if
Speaker 1: you pay people a larger sum of money to tell
Speaker 1: this lie, they will they will afterwards acknowledge it as
Speaker 1: a lie. So, you know, you give me a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks or whatever. I think it was twenty dollars in
Speaker 1: the study, but that was nine fifties money. You give
Speaker 1: me a hundred bucks or something. I say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I I lied to the next guy. I
Speaker 1: told him it was going to be really fun. If
Speaker 1: you pay somebody a pittance sum to tell the lie,
Speaker 1: you give them just a dollar, they are more likely
Speaker 1: afterwards to report believing that what they said was true.
Speaker 1: So you give somebody a hundred dollars to say this
Speaker 1: is really putting the pegs in the holes is really one?
Speaker 1: They say, yeah, I was lying, but hey, I gotta
Speaker 1: pay day. You pay people a dollar to say it,
Speaker 1: and they say, actually putting the pegs in the holes
Speaker 1: was pretty fun. And the reasoning here is that in
Speaker 1: the absence of a large sum of money to internally
Speaker 1: justify the lie in order to basically relieve the cognitive dissonance,
Speaker 1: give you a reason in your mind for having said it.
Speaker 1: The easiest way for people to reduce cognitive dissonance is
Speaker 1: to change their beliefs, change what they believe about what
Speaker 1: they were doing, so that what they were saying actually
Speaker 1: wasn't a lie. It was true. Yeah, but yeah the
Speaker 1: pigs and the holes. It's great. Yeah, I um, I
Speaker 1: agree with what you said said earlier. I think this
Speaker 1: helps to explain a lot of what goes on in
Speaker 1: our heads cognitive dissonance, both specifically as it applies to
Speaker 1: contradictory opinions and beliefs that that we we hold at
Speaker 1: once in our minds, as well as just more broadly,
Speaker 1: getting it the lack of a congruent self you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean human life, you're you're just gonna be
Speaker 1: full of contradictions. I mean, there is no way a
Speaker 1: human can be consistent all the time. You're you're going
Speaker 1: to have pressures that are acting on your mind and
Speaker 1: going in multiple directions, and and most of the time
Speaker 1: these contradictions can exist within you without you really being
Speaker 1: aware of them. But once you become aware of them,
Speaker 1: I am pretty convinced that, yeah, it does manifest is
Speaker 1: this type of stress that you've got to do something about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you often see people using sort of like self
Speaker 1: defining mantras, you know, like I am this first, this second,
Speaker 1: this third, or you know, I am this and this
Speaker 1: and this or you know, you define yourself and your
Speaker 1: your profile on social media as being as being this
Speaker 1: or that or the other. But you know, ultimately, if
Speaker 1: we're being honest, a lot of times it depends on
Speaker 1: on what time of day it is, when we last
Speaker 1: had a little boost of sugar caffeine, you know, how
Speaker 1: tired we are, um, how much sunlight we've been exposed
Speaker 1: to during the day, that sort of thing, how much
Speaker 1: exercise we've had. Uh, those are some just some of
Speaker 1: the factors that can influence the ranking of those little
Speaker 1: um uh, those little phrases that we used to define ourselves,
Speaker 1: and and and even incorporating different phrases that we might
Speaker 1: not we not not have on the list, uh normally
Speaker 1: or certainly when we're you know, outward facing and dealing
Speaker 1: with other people. Yeah, a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: our lives are concerned with trying to create a consistent
Speaker 1: narrative about ourselves, and in fact, ourselves are just not
Speaker 1: that consistent. Yeah. And and really now, I mean, neither
Speaker 1: is our understanding of the past or memory of the
Speaker 1: past or anything. I mean, it it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: so ridiculous the more you unravel it, Like, we were
Speaker 1: so obsessed with our our personal narratives and where we
Speaker 1: fit into it, when in reality, there is no past,
Speaker 1: you know, we are we are creatures of the present,
Speaker 1: traveling into the future. And uh, and yet we end up,
Speaker 1: you know, spending all this time fretting about things that
Speaker 1: are essentially fiction because all we have is just this, uh,
Speaker 1: this copple together false memory of what we were. This
Speaker 1: ties back to previous episodes that we've done on the
Speaker 1: phenomenon of fundamental attribution error. The tendency for people to
Speaker 1: overestimate the role of like internal agency and character and
Speaker 1: underestimate the role of just external situations and forces in
Speaker 1: guiding what human behavior is. It turns out people are
Speaker 1: more malleable and more changeable based on situations than we
Speaker 1: normally like to think. We like to think in terms
Speaker 1: of like, you know, consistent solid psychological storytelling, where John
Speaker 1: snow always stands for right and he just always does
Speaker 1: what is perfectly consistent with his character, and it's explained
Speaker 1: by who he is. But in fact, what we do
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's just explained by what's going
Speaker 1: on around us. But anyway, to come back to the
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance question, one implication of cognitive dissonance is that
Speaker 1: in fact, our beliefs are quite malleable. When beliefs are
Speaker 1: dissident with one another, it looks like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: people don't want to think this about themselves, but it
Speaker 1: seems to be true. We quite often and quite readily
Speaker 1: just change one of our beliefs. We just believe something
Speaker 1: different to get them in line. So anyway, the study
Speaker 1: by Jack Brim looked at the question of whether cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance might be a motivator, even when people are evaluating
Speaker 1: their own preferences, their own personal desires, just likes and dislikes,
Speaker 1: even with regards to very minor things like do you
Speaker 1: like this appliance or not? How much do you like it?
Speaker 1: So the basics of the study, UH, you present people
Speaker 1: with a selection of different household items and appliances ranging
Speaker 1: in retail value for from fifteen dollars to thirty dollars
Speaker 1: but that was at the time a teen fifties dollars um.
Speaker 1: And then you ask the people to rate each of
Speaker 1: these items in terms of desirability. How much would you
Speaker 1: would you like to own this item on a scale
Speaker 1: of one to ten, from extremely desirable to definitely not desirable,
Speaker 1: all or sorry? I think I said one to ten.
Speaker 1: It's one to eight, um, so you know you really
Speaker 1: want the eights, you don't really care about the ones. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the items included things like an automatic coffee maker,
Speaker 1: an electric sandwich grill, a silk screen reproduction and automatic toaster,
Speaker 1: a fluorescent desk lamp, a book of art reproductions, a
Speaker 1: stop watch, and a portable radio. And so, if I'm
Speaker 1: subject in this experiment, I go down the list, I
Speaker 1: do my ratings. I might rate the stop Watch at
Speaker 1: a three out of ten, I don't really care about
Speaker 1: that much. Maybe the sandwich grill at a five, the
Speaker 1: coffee maker at a six, etcetera. And then after I'm
Speaker 1: finished with my ratings and they're taken away, the experiment
Speaker 1: er tells me that as part of my payment for participating,
Speaker 1: I'll get to take home my choice of one of
Speaker 1: two items from the list. But the experiment or picks
Speaker 1: what the two are. So maybe he tells me that
Speaker 1: I can take home either the toaster or the coffee maker,
Speaker 1: which I rated equal, giving both a six, but I
Speaker 1: have to pick one, So I picked the coffee maker
Speaker 1: and I reject the toaster. Then some other conditions take place.
Speaker 1: Uh that there were various other control conditions, but the
Speaker 1: experiment ends at some point with me re rating the
Speaker 1: original objects again for desirability without being able to refer
Speaker 1: to the ratings I had already made. And what the
Speaker 1: researchers found was, on average, if I was forced to
Speaker 1: pick between two objects, my desirability rating for the object
Speaker 1: I picked would go up, and my rating for the
Speaker 1: object I rejected would go down. So maybe I initially
Speaker 1: rated the toaster and the coffee maker both as a six.
Speaker 1: But then if I'm forced to pick between them and
Speaker 1: I picked the coffee maker, afterwards, I might rate the
Speaker 1: coffee maker is a seven and the toaster is a
Speaker 1: four or something like that. Now, why would that be? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because one of the one of the
Speaker 1: possible examples that came to mind when I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this was to go back to a previous episode
Speaker 1: that we recorded, thinking about how you know, back when
Speaker 1: when I was younger, you had, you know, like maybe
Speaker 1: twenty bucks to blow on a CD during the course
Speaker 1: of a month, and you made your pick, you bought it,
Speaker 1: and then even if it wasn't that great, you kind
Speaker 1: of found a reason to like that album as you
Speaker 1: listen to it over and over again, you found at
Speaker 1: least one song. But in those cases, you have sunk
Speaker 1: cost in the situation, like I spent money on it
Speaker 1: um in addition to time, whereas in this scenario, uh,
Speaker 1: it's there. Their money is not the issue. There's like
Speaker 1: I guess there's sort of a sunk cost in time,
Speaker 1: but we don't have that that financial aspect of the scenario, right,
Speaker 1: So the sunk cost fallacy does seem to be real,
Speaker 1: Like we make choice supportive, biased judgments in favor of
Speaker 1: stuff that we've already invested time and money and all
Speaker 1: that into. But here it's just like, well, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get one or the other, which one do you want?
Speaker 1: And it seems like once you pick one out of
Speaker 1: the two, the one you didn't pick look like junk,
Speaker 1: and the one you did pick, oh, that's pretty great.
Speaker 1: I do find this. I think there's just you know,
Speaker 1: me thinking back on past experiences. But I feel like
Speaker 1: this with ice creams sometimes, like ultimately, most of the
Speaker 1: ice creams at then ice ice cream place, you know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be great. I'm gonna enjoy them. They're just
Speaker 1: gonna be varying degrees of sweetness and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: complex flavor, I guess. But I'll often find myself thinking, like,
Speaker 1: you know, afterwards, if I'm there with my family, will all,
Speaker 1: you know, sample each other's ice creams, and I'll generally go, yep,
Speaker 1: I made the right choice. This is the ice cream
Speaker 1: for me. Yep. Now there could be multiple reasons for that.
Speaker 1: One reason is extremely straightforward. One reason is you just
Speaker 1: picked the one you actually wanted most, you know what,
Speaker 1: your preferences are and you acted them out. But there
Speaker 1: could be good at this, Yeah, there could be other
Speaker 1: things at work too, And so the underlying explanation based
Speaker 1: on cognitive dissonance for what was observed in the study,
Speaker 1: it goes something like this. When you evaluate how much
Speaker 1: you want to potential possessions, you think in a general
Speaker 1: way about the pros and cons of each, what do
Speaker 1: you like about them, what do you dislike about them?
Speaker 1: Then if you are forced to choose between two options
Speaker 1: for which you see roughly similar amounts of pros and cons,
Speaker 1: it creates one of these mildly stressful states of cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: And again that sounds funny because like, how could that
Speaker 1: be stressful? But it looks like this just does manifest
Speaker 1: a stress in our brains, even though it doesn't really
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense that it would. So you
Speaker 1: didn't choose the toaster, even though there are things that
Speaker 1: you like about the toaster, etcetera. And this uncomfortable state
Speaker 1: of cognitive dissonance has a name actually, when it's applied
Speaker 1: to expensive purchases, when you've spent money on it, it's
Speaker 1: known as buyer's remorse. Right, Okay, I need to buy
Speaker 1: a lawnmower. But you know, what the hell do I
Speaker 1: know about lawnmowers. I can't tell one from the other.
Speaker 1: They cost a lot of money, but I need one,
Speaker 1: and I can't really tell them apart. So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna have to pick one of these here at the
Speaker 1: store and buy it so I can cut the grass.
Speaker 1: But after you've made a purchase like this, okay, big
Speaker 1: dollar item, you've spent a lot on it, you you
Speaker 1: just picked one, people often experience a sinking feeling, this
Speaker 1: form of stress and psychological discomfort. Did I buy the
Speaker 1: right one? And you think about what might have been
Speaker 1: good about the ones you didn't buy, and you think
Speaker 1: about what might be wrong with the one you did buy.
Speaker 1: So to eliminate the stress of this dissonance, the theory
Speaker 1: goes that your brain simply changes your beliefs. You change
Speaker 1: your beliefs about what you prefer and what you want,
Speaker 1: emphasizing the pros and de emphasizing the cons of the
Speaker 1: option you chose, and vice versa for the option you rejected.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense in a weird way, right, I Mean,
Speaker 1: we often think of that our beliefs should be these
Speaker 1: these core and just fixed things about ourselves, you know,
Speaker 1: uh that you know, although the wind and the raging
Speaker 1: of the world just move around, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from from the mind standpoint, it's like, well, uh, this
Speaker 1: is causing a problem. Let's let's change this circuit here,
Speaker 1: because we're getting some some feedback that that is not
Speaker 1: optimal for the system. Right. Um. Now. I will note that,
Speaker 1: of course, as always, these these results apply on average,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to think about other ways that some
Speaker 1: people might reduce cognitive dissonance in this kind of situation
Speaker 1: without changing their original preferences, without changing their opinions about
Speaker 1: what's desirable. I think one very common adaptive strategy is
Speaker 1: the adaptive strategy of internally de emphasizing the importance of possessions, which,
Speaker 1: in fact, in reality, which you know, moment to moment,
Speaker 1: reduces the cognitive dissonance that arises from making choices about possessions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of realizing, well, a lawnlowers don't really matter. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it's just the thing, and I'm going to spend
Speaker 1: a certain amount on it. It's just I'm gonna spend
Speaker 1: what it costs. I'm gonna get whichever one is just easiest.
Speaker 1: To obtain in the smoking example. I think this is
Speaker 1: kind of the this is equivalent to the like who
Speaker 1: wants to live forever? Option, but thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: consumer items instead of your life, Like I'm not reckless
Speaker 1: with my health, I'm just very zen about this whole
Speaker 1: smoking thing, right. I think it makes more sense to
Speaker 1: try to do the zen path about the lawnmower material possessions.
Speaker 1: But hey, I mean that's hard. I mean, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: just like blithely say everybody should do that. But I
Speaker 1: mean it's difficult to do that. People, you're spending your money,
Speaker 1: that is your labor. You're you're thinking, oh God, did
Speaker 1: I did I get it right? Um and and the
Speaker 1: same even manifest when you're just making a decision about
Speaker 1: what appliance you want to take home after spending an
Speaker 1: afternoon doing an experiment. Um and And I should also
Speaker 1: note that there have been some competing explanations for this phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but it seems like cognitive dissonance is favored by the
Speaker 1: experts and supported by a lot of other experiments. Um So,
Speaker 1: I wanted to note in this experiment there were a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting control conditions and additional hypotheses tested that
Speaker 1: ended up not receiving support from the data, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get into those, but I did want
Speaker 1: to mention one control condition, the gift condition, and this
Speaker 1: provides an interesting variation on what they found. So there
Speaker 1: is some indication that owning something makes people see that
Speaker 1: thing as more desirable. So what if it was the
Speaker 1: effect of ownership of this appliance they received that made
Speaker 1: the difference, rather than reduction of cognitive dissonance arising from
Speaker 1: your choices. Well, to control for that, in this gift condition,
Speaker 1: the subject did not get to choose which item they
Speaker 1: would receive. It was just picked for them and given
Speaker 1: as a gift by by the experimenter. And what Brim
Speaker 1: found is that this control condition did not produce effects
Speaker 1: to challenge the main finding. So it really did look like,
Speaker 1: at least from this experiment, that people's ratings were actually
Speaker 1: changed by the choices they made and not just by
Speaker 1: feelings associated with ownership or feelings from what you're taking home.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the fact that you have the coffee maker
Speaker 1: that makes it seem better. It was the fact that
Speaker 1: you chose it. You know, when this is this gets
Speaker 1: more complicated and perhaps it's just looked at more in
Speaker 1: the appropriate literature surrounding it. But I'm instantly reminded of
Speaker 1: some of the advertising mechanics that I've encountered recently on YouTube,
Speaker 1: where I'm watching a show that that I that we
Speaker 1: regularly watch, and then I'll instead of just being served
Speaker 1: an ad, I get served a little choice that says,
Speaker 1: which of the following ads would you like to receive most?
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is a mechanic that's playing into
Speaker 1: some of this. Oh yes, so like if you choose it,
Speaker 1: maybe the ideas you'll actually be uh less resentful of
Speaker 1: the ad and more likely to pay attention to it
Speaker 1: and listen all the way through. Yeah, I wonder, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: because I know is the choice is never like um,
Speaker 1: it's never a wonderful like an easy choice. It's not
Speaker 1: like do you want to see an ad for the
Speaker 1: new Star Wars TV show? Or do you want to
Speaker 1: watch an insurance commercial? Now, it's always like which insurance
Speaker 1: commercial would you like to watch? Well, it's got to
Speaker 1: be the one with that really nice lady. Was one
Speaker 1: with a really nice lady who's always really nice? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I like the weird ones, give me the
Speaker 1: give me the yeah, the gecko ones c g I
Speaker 1: geck yeah, make me not realize it was for insurance
Speaker 1: and and never think twice about what the product actually was. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: just to read the top line from the conclusion of
Speaker 1: brim study quote, the results supported the prediction that choosing
Speaker 1: between alternatives would create dissonance and attempts to reduce it
Speaker 1: by making the chosen alternative more desirable and the unchosen
Speaker 1: alternative less desirable. Yeah. This reminds me of another paper,
Speaker 1: Joe that I think you're familiar with, Love the one
Speaker 1: You're with by Stephen Stills at All Yep, when you
Speaker 1: know when you're down, when you're confused and you don't
Speaker 1: remember how you rated the items originally now uh more. Seriously, though,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this completely sticks, but I instantly
Speaker 1: looking over all this, I started thinking about the still
Speaker 1: relevant divide over gaming systems. So back when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, Like the first major choice I think I
Speaker 1: had to make because I was an ne Ne Ne s kid,
Speaker 1: and then came the choice Super nes or Saga Genesis,
Speaker 1: and then eventually later comes to PlayStation Xbox Divide, and
Speaker 1: I think that's that's still very much alive today. But
Speaker 1: but basically, you know, one often has to make a
Speaker 1: choice which prices system they're going to invest in. And
Speaker 1: this also impacts certain console exclusives, right Like, if you're
Speaker 1: a Nintendo White, then you're gonna get Mario and so
Speaker 1: you can end up on Team Mario. If you're a Sagatarian,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna you're gonna be a follower of Saints Sonic,
Speaker 1: the Hedgehog and may you know, maybe Saint Altered Beast. Xbox.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get Gears of War. In Halo PlayStation, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get Gods of War and or God of War
Speaker 1: whatever it was, and the Last Office. So um. You know,
Speaker 1: on on one level, on like a very rational level,
Speaker 1: you engage with in some decision making. You're like, well,
Speaker 1: uh I know this franchise as a console exclusive, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go this direction. But in other cases, uh I
Speaker 1: do looking back, I do find myself having engaged in
Speaker 1: some of that. You know, like I didn't really have
Speaker 1: a huge opinion on the whole Mario Sonic divide, and
Speaker 1: yet I found at times someone like today will bring
Speaker 1: up Mario and Sonic and be like oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Mario was cool, but Sonic was a bit lame. Sonic
Speaker 1: was a bit a bit of a pu Pucci, and
Speaker 1: I realistically have to agree with them. But I have
Speaker 1: this impulse to defend Sonic because I was a Saga player,
Speaker 1: because I had the Saga Genesis, and even though I
Speaker 1: didn't really love Sonic the Hedgehog like he was, still
Speaker 1: I was still on that team, you know. So I'm
Speaker 1: still reeling from Sonic being a Pucci, which I think
Speaker 1: is highly accurate. I'm sorry it is. No, I I agree,
Speaker 1: I rationally agree with you, but I have this irrational response,
Speaker 1: this knee jerk reaction to defend him for some reason,
Speaker 1: even though I never completed a Sonic game and ultimately
Speaker 1: don't have a real strong opinion on Sonic versus Mario.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I played both of them at some point
Speaker 1: or another. Uh, and I didn't particularly, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really rationally love one more than the other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think ideas like which video game console
Speaker 1: you buy that that goes in the same direction as
Speaker 1: a lot of these sort of like consumer options that
Speaker 1: people choose between, where I think clearly like both kinds
Speaker 1: of considerations are going to be feeding in like there
Speaker 1: are some just genuine preference differences, like you can look
Speaker 1: at like which games you can get on each one
Speaker 1: and have a genuine desire to play one more than
Speaker 1: the other. But then there's also probably some choice supportive
Speaker 1: bias kicking in and how you retrospectively think about making
Speaker 1: the choice and which one you'd like better? And I
Speaker 1: guess I should say that A less favored but also
Speaker 1: possibly viable explanation for for this phenomenon um like observed
Speaker 1: in Brim study is known as self perception theory. Basically,
Speaker 1: this is an alternative to cognitive dissonance theory that comes
Speaker 1: down to the principle that people form their internal perceptions
Speaker 1: of the self by observing external action ends. So, how
Speaker 1: do you decide what your preferences are? Will you actually
Speaker 1: decide them by observing what you choose? And so if
Speaker 1: this were the correct interpretation, this would also explain choice
Speaker 1: induced preference change, which is what the phenomenon would come
Speaker 1: to be known as choice induced preference change. You make
Speaker 1: the choice and that changes retrospectively what you think your
Speaker 1: preferences are. And Brim's results have been replicated many times
Speaker 1: across many studies. Uh, there are, there are some disagreements,
Speaker 1: but it appears to me to be a pretty solid
Speaker 1: conclusion that not only do our preferences influence our choices,
Speaker 1: but our choices really do influence our preferences. And this
Speaker 1: probably happens in both positive and negative directions. So again,
Speaker 1: just like in that first study, our preferences for options
Speaker 1: that we choose increase, and our preferences for options that
Speaker 1: we reject decrease. And I think the second condition is
Speaker 1: especially interesting. It explains something that I've often observed, and
Speaker 1: it totally that so many things in life are once
Speaker 1: discarded despised. Almost as soon as you have committed to
Speaker 1: rejecting an option, you can suddenly think of all kinds
Speaker 1: of reasons why that option was bad anyway, The cons
Speaker 1: just boil up into your brain. Yeah, this is interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought about this in terms of video games, but
Speaker 1: then I think I thought of an even better example,
Speaker 1: and that is, um, the music of Metallica. So so
Speaker 1: i'm i'm I. I always try to be a polite
Speaker 1: person about things that I like and what things other
Speaker 1: people like. So you know, if at any point someone
Speaker 1: was to come up to me and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about Metallica, or you know, I'm listening
Speaker 1: to this old Metallic album. I'm trying to have this
Speaker 1: new Metallic album. I would probably be like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Metallic is cool. But if I if I'm being if
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, like there was there was a time
Speaker 1: in my life where I was super into Metallica. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, discovering those those albums for the
Speaker 1: first time, know uh, you know, you know, Ride the
Speaker 1: Lightning and so forth for me. For me, that was
Speaker 1: like Metallica City. Yeah, yeah, it was. I think I
Speaker 1: I was maybe just starting college or maybe it was
Speaker 1: finishing high school when I really started getting into them.
Speaker 1: But it was like, you know, everything from the Black
Speaker 1: album prior. I was like, this is amazing and um,
Speaker 1: and then at some point I was like, uh, basically
Speaker 1: I less. I stopped listening to them for a very
Speaker 1: long time, and then more recently I started listening to
Speaker 1: them again. And and that's like the realistic read on it.
Speaker 1: But on some level, I do feel like when I
Speaker 1: discarded Metallica, I was like, yeah, Metallica kind of sucks.
Speaker 1: Like those guys are jerks. Uh, They're newer stuff is
Speaker 1: not any good. You know, all these various things you
Speaker 1: kind of heap onto the pile, which is ridiculous because hey,
Speaker 1: I used to really like them, and then I would
Speaker 1: have to like current me would have to point out
Speaker 1: to then me, you're going to like them again. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be a come of time in where you suddenly
Speaker 1: starts streaming a bunch of old Metaca albums again, and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to make sense with this current
Speaker 1: rejection of them. Is A is A is A is
Speaker 1: a musical entity. This is really funny because just this
Speaker 1: week I started listening to their first two albums again.
Speaker 1: I wonder why that happened. Is there something in common
Speaker 1: that did this come up in a previous talk we had.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've really talked about Metauica recently. I
Speaker 1: mean it comes up time to time. But metal serendipity,
Speaker 1: I I find very interesting that I love the stupid
Speaker 1: ideology of their early albums, which there is presumed to
Speaker 1: be some kind of great conflict over the concept of metal.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's great about early early
Speaker 1: albums within a genre is that they're often very much
Speaker 1: about the genre. So like you know, like early rock
Speaker 1: music is all about what rocking is and instructing you
Speaker 1: to rock. Uh, They're like early rap songs that are
Speaker 1: about rapping and about and telling people how to wrap.
Speaker 1: And their early metal albums are vertty much all about metal,
Speaker 1: and Metallica's early albums are are all about the concept
Speaker 1: of metal and what it means to fight in the
Speaker 1: metal wars. I love this, Yeah, I have a big
Speaker 1: I really love house music as well, and of course
Speaker 1: there's so many different types of house music to listen to,
Speaker 1: but I still have a very warm place for house
Speaker 1: music that informs you that this is house music. We
Speaker 1: have a voice telling you you are listening to house music,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's great. I don't get enough music
Speaker 1: that is very explicit about the genre that I'm listening to.
Speaker 1: That's excellent. I wonder what age a genre mostly stops
Speaker 1: being about the concept of itself as a genre is
Speaker 1: like metal today isn't usually very much about the concept
Speaker 1: of metal, like early thresh metal was. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess it just evolves to a certain certain point. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, in all of this, you know, not to
Speaker 1: get too far off the point here, I think also
Speaker 1: you have that kind of like Evan flow of nostalgia, right,
Speaker 1: So the thing you're into then you get out of,
Speaker 1: and then you can reach a point where you look
Speaker 1: back on it only and get back into it at
Speaker 1: least some degree. But it's funny because I went through
Speaker 1: a cycle that exactly mirrors yours. Like I liked them
Speaker 1: when I was younger, and then after once I stopped
Speaker 1: listening to them. Wasn't a deliberate choice. I just kind
Speaker 1: of moved on to other things. And then I look
Speaker 1: back on music that I used to listen to and
Speaker 1: don't listen to anymore, and often feel this, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this kind of sting this thing like Okay, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess what's probably very much going on is I
Speaker 1: don't listen to it. I'm supporting that choice to not
Speaker 1: listen to it by changing my beliefs about it and
Speaker 1: deciding that it's dumb anyway than now. Following up from
Speaker 1: Brim's original study in the fifties, like I said, there
Speaker 1: have been a bunch of replications, but there have also
Speaker 1: been some interesting questions. Like one study I was looking
Speaker 1: at investigated something about the methodology of the test, so
Speaker 1: it was it was trying to see if the results
Speaker 1: stand up to challenges to brims original method. And the
Speaker 1: paper I was looking at here was by Tally Shiro,
Speaker 1: Christina M. Velasquez, and Raymond J. Dolan, published in Psychological
Speaker 1: Science in two thousand ten, called do Decisions Shape Preference?
Speaker 1: Evidence from blind Choice? Now that this was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: So the authors here begin by noting some papers all
Speaker 1: the ones I saw, were associated with their researcher named
Speaker 1: mk Chen that noticed a potential problem with Brem's method,
Speaker 1: such that it could be telling us something different than
Speaker 1: what we think it does. And the critique goes like
Speaker 1: this in uh, in the author's hiro at all's words
Speaker 1: here quote, people's preferences cannot be measured perfectly and are
Speaker 1: subject to rating noise. Okay, true, as participants gain experience
Speaker 1: with the rating scale, they will provide more accurate ratings,
Speaker 1: such that post choice shifts in ratings simply reflect the
Speaker 1: unmasking of the participants initial preferences, which can be predicted
Speaker 1: by their choices, rather than reflecting any changes in preference
Speaker 1: induced by the choice. Uh So does that make sense? Basically?
Speaker 1: I think what they're saying is that maybe when people
Speaker 1: change their desirability ratings of two things that are initially
Speaker 1: similar after being forced to pick one or the other.
Speaker 1: What's happening is not an ex post facto reevaluation of
Speaker 1: their preferences, but people are just getting better with successive
Speaker 1: tries at expressing their genuine, pre existing preferences on the
Speaker 1: rating scale used in the experiment. It seems like a
Speaker 1: reasonable critique that that would be worth looking into. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think we can all see examples of that
Speaker 1: or find examples of that where you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: I was trying out this one musical genre. It turns
Speaker 1: out that just one my thing. Or like I think
Speaker 1: back on video games and I'm like, yeah, I eventually
Speaker 1: realized I'm just not good at real time strategy games.
Speaker 1: I just don't like them as much they don't. It's
Speaker 1: just not my deal, right, So it would be that
Speaker 1: the actual preferences in the beginning were what was revealed
Speaker 1: in the second rating, and you're just getting better at
Speaker 1: expressing them rather than changing them. Uh So, the authors
Speaker 1: of this two thousands ten study tried to design an
Speaker 1: experiment that couldn't be subject to that problem, and what
Speaker 1: they came up with was what they called a blind
Speaker 1: choice model as opposed to a free choice model. So
Speaker 1: what's the difference. Well, in a free choice model, again,
Speaker 1: remember you would rate a number of options according to
Speaker 1: your preference. Then you'd be forced to choose between some
Speaker 1: subset of them. Then later you rate the options again.
Speaker 1: In this study, what was different was that people didn't
Speaker 1: know what two options from the list they were choosing
Speaker 1: between until they had made their choice. So you're given
Speaker 1: a hypothetical list of vacation destinations and you rate them
Speaker 1: in terms of how much you'd like to go there
Speaker 1: for a vacation, so you know, Rome, Cairo, et cetera. Then,
Speaker 1: after the initial rating task, you are asked to choose
Speaker 1: blindly between a binary subset for a hypothetical vacation, but
Speaker 1: you can't see what they are. Is you have option
Speaker 1: A and option B, but the actual locations are hidden,
Speaker 1: and you choose one. Once you choose between them, the
Speaker 1: options are then revealed, so it's like, oh, so it
Speaker 1: seems you've picked Making instead of Tuscany or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: And and then once it's all over, you will be
Speaker 1: asked to rate the options again. So so does that
Speaker 1: make sense that you can't see what the options are
Speaker 1: you're just making a choice without any information at all,
Speaker 1: just complete blind choice. And they also included a couple
Speaker 1: of control conditions where a computer made the decision for people,
Speaker 1: so you don't get to make a choice at all,
Speaker 1: to see if the perception of personal agency was important
Speaker 1: even though the choice was made blind. And it's not
Speaker 1: just a case of like picking a door and then
Speaker 1: what's behind door number three? Because at least in that
Speaker 1: scenario you picked three. But in this there's like a
Speaker 1: robot game show host that as you walk up and
Speaker 1: then it just says you're getting a toaster, right, you
Speaker 1: get what's behind door number three? That that's the difference there.
Speaker 1: And so what did the study find. Quote, We found
Speaker 1: that preferences were altered after participants made a blind choice,
Speaker 1: but not when a computer instructed the participants decision. The
Speaker 1: results suggests that just as preferences form choices, choices shape preferences.
Speaker 1: So this is confirming to some degree Brem's original results.
Speaker 1: It looks like, yes, these studies have not merely been
Speaker 1: tracking how people get better at assigning ratings to their
Speaker 1: pre existing preferences. What people want and prefer really does
Speaker 1: seem to change, So that it falls in line with
Speaker 1: what they have already chosen. And this study also reveals
Speaker 1: this very interesting wrinkle, choice induced preference change can happen
Speaker 1: even when we are not making an informed choice but
Speaker 1: just choosing randomly between two options that are temporarily hidden,
Speaker 1: which which is very interesting. So there's some part of
Speaker 1: us that, again, if the if the cognitive dissonance interpretation
Speaker 1: of this phenomenon is correct, there's some part of us
Speaker 1: that feels a kind of agency that needs to be
Speaker 1: accounted for in what you chose, even if you didn't
Speaker 1: know what you were choosing, Even if you're just choosing
Speaker 1: you know, hats and you can't see what's inside them,
Speaker 1: or or yeah, door number three, you still feel like
Speaker 1: I picked that and I need to justify that decision internally. Huh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is That is interesting. I'm surprised we we
Speaker 1: don't see more of this utilized in online advertising, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe there's a version of that YouTube scenarios describing
Speaker 1: earlier where instead of giving you a choice of specific as,
Speaker 1: it says, what do you want ad number one or
Speaker 1: add number two? And maybe it's a completely false choice.
Speaker 1: You know you're always going to get the same ad,
Speaker 1: but they are going to give you the provide this
Speaker 1: illusion that you had to say. Well, this is interesting
Speaker 1: because when people do not have the illusion that they
Speaker 1: have a say, then apparently the effect does not hold
Speaker 1: because again thing back to the computer condition. At least
Speaker 1: in this study, choice induced preference change only seems to
Speaker 1: apply if you think it's really you making the choice,
Speaker 1: not if some someone or something else chooses for you.
Speaker 1: And this mirror is what brim found in the gift condition.
Speaker 1: If you're given three options and then the computer says Okay,
Speaker 1: of these three options, you get number three, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have you don't change your evaluations afterwards. Now, to come
Speaker 1: back to the black mirror, Bandersnatch episode, which again is
Speaker 1: a choose your own adventure type episode where you make
Speaker 1: choices when you watch it in Netflix. Um, I remember
Speaker 1: when I rewatched it last year for our episode. I
Speaker 1: ended up being really pleased with the way it came
Speaker 1: together based on my choices. But it was because what
Speaker 1: was it? Because I actually hit on a good combo
Speaker 1: of narrative branches and this choose your own adventure world?
Speaker 1: Or or was it this? You know? Because to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, there are aspects of of of all this,
Speaker 1: and in the blind test, you know you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know how the choices you make will impact the overall
Speaker 1: shape of the narrative by the time you're done with it.
Speaker 1: That's a really good comparison. I mean, I feel well,
Speaker 1: I mean thinking about how I interacted with Bandersnatch or
Speaker 1: with Choose your Own Adventure books when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: It's funny how we feel some amount of angst and
Speaker 1: personal accountability, or at least I did, for how the
Speaker 1: Bandersnatch or that Choose your Own Adventure choices turn out,
Speaker 1: even though there's usually no way you could have predicted
Speaker 1: the ways that they will actually play out in narrative.
Speaker 1: Merely the suggestion that you're in control seems to be
Speaker 1: enough to conjure the shadow of personal agency over the
Speaker 1: direction of the narrative, and thus I think enough to
Speaker 1: bring in the feeling of cognitive dissonance when you choose
Speaker 1: a path that goes somewhere you don't like or that
Speaker 1: feels bad or increases the tension. Yeah. So there's another study,
Speaker 1: and an older study that I wanted to mention briefly,
Speaker 1: and this one is from the year two thousand ten
Speaker 1: that looks at choice induced preference change in children and
Speaker 1: non human animals. And I thought that this was very
Speaker 1: interesting because this seems to get to because you could wonder, like,
Speaker 1: ok so, it seems like this choice induced preference change thing,
Speaker 1: it really does go on. But is this a function
Speaker 1: of like like adult cognition, you know, adult pictures of
Speaker 1: the self, or would this happen at a more primal
Speaker 1: level that you would see even in you know, uh,
Speaker 1: even in four year old children and in monkeys and stuff.
Speaker 1: And and it looks like the answer is basically yes,
Speaker 1: you do see this even in four year old children
Speaker 1: and capuchin monkeys. Now you might wonder how you could
Speaker 1: how you could create the test conditions there, because you
Speaker 1: can't like ask them to to like rate a list
Speaker 1: of appliances or something. Right, Um, so the study design
Speaker 1: here for for human children. It's kind of complicated to explain,
Speaker 1: but once I read it, I thought it was actually
Speaker 1: very elegant and ingenious. So if you don't mind, I
Speaker 1: just want to read their description of their experimental set
Speaker 1: up here. Oh and sorry, I don't think I said
Speaker 1: that this. Uh This paper is by Luisa see Egan
Speaker 1: Paul Bloom and Laurie are Santos in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Experimental Social Psychology in two thousand ten um so to
Speaker 1: read from their their methodology. With the test condition involving
Speaker 1: human children, quote, the experiment or first displayed an opaque
Speaker 1: gray stocking to the child and sequentially extracted three toys,
Speaker 1: described as some of the experimenter's favorite things, which were
Speaker 1: really fun, but you have to be creative with them.
Speaker 1: The toys distended the stockings such that the contours of
Speaker 1: each could be seen, but the color could not be discerned.
Speaker 1: The experiment are extracted and displayed the three toys to
Speaker 1: the child, described them as some of her favorite things,
Speaker 1: then shuffled them as she lifted them behind an occluder
Speaker 1: and announced that she would hide the toys. She removed
Speaker 1: the occluder to display two stockings, one dotted and one argyle.
Speaker 1: The experiment or pointed out that the outlines of two
Speaker 1: toys were visible within one of the stockings, and that
Speaker 1: the outline of the third toy was visible in the
Speaker 1: second stocking. In the choice condition, the experiment are held
Speaker 1: up the stocking with two toys and asked the child
Speaker 1: to reach in without peaking and choose a toy. In
Speaker 1: the no choice condition, the experiment or reached into the
Speaker 1: stocking with two toys, pulled one closer to the mouth
Speaker 1: of the stocking, held up the stocking, and asked the
Speaker 1: child to remove the toy on top again without peaking.
Speaker 1: In phase two, a second experiment or blind to which
Speaker 1: stocking originally contained two toys, indicated the two stockings and
Speaker 1: asked the child to choose a toy to play with.
Speaker 1: Children were instructed not to peek before making their selection.
Speaker 1: So what were the results here? Well, in the choice condition,
Speaker 1: children strongly preferred the toy in the second stocking, meaning
Speaker 1: the toy that they had not had a chance to
Speaker 1: reject from the first stocking. Uh and and they preferred
Speaker 1: sixty six point seven percent of children in the choice
Speaker 1: condition went for the new toy in the second stocking
Speaker 1: instead of the one that they hadn't grabbed from from
Speaker 1: the first stocking. But in the no choice condition, remember
Speaker 1: this is the one where the experiment or picks for
Speaker 1: the kid. The kid doesn't get to pick themselves, the
Speaker 1: effect vanished. In fact, in the condition where the toy
Speaker 1: was chosen for them, kids did the opposite with the
Speaker 1: majority wanting to reach into the first stocking again and
Speaker 1: get the other toy. And remember that this is despite
Speaker 1: them fishing the toys out at random. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: was also a similar test on capuchin monkeys. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into as much detail, and that one
Speaker 1: it involves skittles instead of toys, and it found the
Speaker 1: same thing. When monkeys were tricked into believing that they
Speaker 1: had a choice between two initial candies, and then they
Speaker 1: were given the option to choose between the previously rejected
Speaker 1: candy of the first two and a new third alternative.
Speaker 1: They overwhelmingly preferred the new alternative instead of the one
Speaker 1: that they had not chosen in the previous choice. So again,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like once discarded, now despised. But
Speaker 1: as with women children, this was only true if the
Speaker 1: monkeys were made to think they had a free choice
Speaker 1: between the first two. If the choice was clearly made
Speaker 1: for them and they didn't get to pick, they no
Speaker 1: longer seemed to devalue the other option from the first
Speaker 1: pair of candies. Uh. That that's very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that if this manifests in children and monkeys,
Speaker 1: it seems like choice induced preference change obviously doesn't depend
Speaker 1: on any sort of like adult sense of self image
Speaker 1: or sophisticated logical logical reasoning. Based on this study, if
Speaker 1: if this holds up, it appears that our choices may
Speaker 1: influence our preferences at a fairly primal level. And I
Speaker 1: want to read from a section that from their conclusion
Speaker 1: that picks up on one of the things I noted
Speaker 1: about the children's no choice condition. So quote Curiously, we
Speaker 1: observed a marginally significant effect in which children in the
Speaker 1: no choice condition. Remember that this one where they didn't
Speaker 1: get to pick the experiment or picked for them out
Speaker 1: of the first stock, they preferred the toy that the
Speaker 1: experiment or did not give them. Although we had originally
Speaker 1: hypothesized that children would be at chance on this condition,
Speaker 1: the observed pattern of performance hence that children's preferences may
Speaker 1: change not merely because of their choices, but also because
Speaker 1: of their lack of choices. Consistent with Brims nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six reactance theory and Brim and Wine Troubs research on
Speaker 1: reactants and two year olds, children's preferences may reflect psychological
Speaker 1: reactants when choice freedom is denied. So and the possibility
Speaker 1: uh here is that the effect is not only not
Speaker 1: present when you perceive somebody else's denying you a free choice,
Speaker 1: there could be a reverse effect. Once one of two
Speaker 1: options is denied you by an outside force, the denied
Speaker 1: option is not only not despised, it's coveted. You want
Speaker 1: that thing that you were told you couldn't have, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine we can a lot of us can imagine
Speaker 1: remember childhood examples of this, you know, like the the
Speaker 1: toy you were not permitted to have, the the book
Speaker 1: that was denied to you, that sort of thing. Yeah. Now, now,
Speaker 1: of course, there are always gonna be reasons for this
Speaker 1: that make it makes sense in your brain, like they're
Speaker 1: intrinsic qualities to that toy or that book or something
Speaker 1: that seemed like that's why I really wanted. But it
Speaker 1: seems like even among toys that are identical, there there
Speaker 1: is this preference that arises from Uh. It seems like
Speaker 1: if we have had the option to pick something and
Speaker 1: we didn't pick it, afterwards, it's it becomes far less
Speaker 1: interesting to us. We don't really want it at all.
Speaker 1: But if we were presented with something as a possible
Speaker 1: option and we're not given the opportunity to get it,
Speaker 1: then we really wanted So anyway, I was looking around
Speaker 1: for some challenges to the to the choice induce preference
Speaker 1: change phenomenon, and I was trying to find if there
Speaker 1: are any studies that found the opposite. There are a few.
Speaker 1: For example, I found this paper which criticizes the interpretation
Speaker 1: of Brim's original findings and the replications um and it
Speaker 1: attempts a modified replication of its own. So this was
Speaker 1: by Steiner Holden polition in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
Speaker 1: Do choices affect preferences? Some doubts and new evidence, And
Speaker 1: the author here says quote, I find no evidence of
Speaker 1: choice induced changes in preferences after a choice between items
Speaker 1: where one was viewed as more attractive than the other,
Speaker 1: but potentially some weak evidence of changes in preferences after
Speaker 1: a choice between items viewed as equally attractive. So that's
Speaker 1: worth keeping in mind. There are some challenges to this phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and in its robustness that this does appear to be
Speaker 1: a minority finding, and in fact it doesn't fully contradict
Speaker 1: to the other results, it only partially contradicts them. But
Speaker 1: then finally I wanted to get to one last study
Speaker 1: I was reading this was actually the one I was
Speaker 1: reading about that made me want to do this episode
Speaker 1: in the first place. It's a very recent study on
Speaker 1: choice induced preference change, this time in human babies in
Speaker 1: improve verbal human infants, published just this year. So this
Speaker 1: is by alex M. Silver, Amy, E. Stall Rita Loyaltial,
Speaker 1: Alexis S. Smith Flores, and Lisa Feigenson. When not choosing
Speaker 1: leads to not liking Choice induced preference in Infancy, published
Speaker 1: in Psychological Science this year. Some of the authors were
Speaker 1: affiliated with JOHNS. Hopkins University, the University of Pittsburgh, and
Speaker 1: the College of New Jersey. And again they tested for
Speaker 1: choice induced preference change in pre verbal infants across seven
Speaker 1: studies with a methodology that's uh somewhat similar to one
Speaker 1: of the ones we looked at earlier, with the ones
Speaker 1: testing with four year olds and capuchin monkeys and UH
Speaker 1: from from their conclusion and discussion, they say, quote, our
Speaker 1: findings suggests that choice induced preference change does not require
Speaker 1: extensive experience making choices, nor does it rely on advanced
Speaker 1: metacognitive ability or developed sense of self. Because they found
Speaker 1: this in pre verbal infants. If pre verbal infants are
Speaker 1: changing their their preferences based on what they've chosen. It
Speaker 1: seems like it really would not require any of those things.
Speaker 1: It's happening at some lower level in the brain. And
Speaker 1: it also raises interesting questions about how preferences get formed
Speaker 1: very early in life, if they might stem from choices
Speaker 1: made at random in some sense when you're a baby. Uh,
Speaker 1: like they say, quote, our findings add to our understanding
Speaker 1: of the role of choice in infancy, showing that infants
Speaker 1: use their own choices to shape their preferences. This work
Speaker 1: raises the question of whether other aspects of the psychology
Speaker 1: of decision making also have their roots in very early life. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make me wonder if, like, there are things
Speaker 1: that adults are still carrying trying to keep a consistent
Speaker 1: narrative about their preferences, their likes and dislikes that may
Speaker 1: have their roots may have emerged at some point when
Speaker 1: they made some basically random decision as a pre verbal infant.
Speaker 1: In't that weird? That is weird? Yeah, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: you don't want to dwell on the past and to
Speaker 1: think that you know choices in your past to find you.
Speaker 1: But what if those are baby choices? What if it
Speaker 1: all treads down to baby choices? Right? What if things
Speaker 1: that you think of as fundamental to your you know,
Speaker 1: your own idiosyncrasies, your your view of yourself, are rooted
Speaker 1: in you just trying to stay consistent with something that
Speaker 1: happened when you were two, yeah, or one, even? I
Speaker 1: mean you know, I picked I picked the yellow block
Speaker 1: instead of the red block, and and ever since then,
Speaker 1: yellow has been my preferred color. Interesting, Um, I had
Speaker 1: a I had a scenario in my head. I'm not
Speaker 1: I don't think this one necessarily applies, but perhaps you have.
Speaker 1: You have an opinion on it based on what we've
Speaker 1: discussed so far. In the movie A Christmas Story, the
Speaker 1: old man receives a major award, which of course turns
Speaker 1: out to be a lamp that looks like a woman's leg. Um,
Speaker 1: how would you, um interpret his attachment to the major award? Well,
Speaker 1: clearly he he is suffering from a kind of preference
Speaker 1: bias about the major award. That's like a self flattering
Speaker 1: bias of some kind. I'm not sure best how to
Speaker 1: categorize it. I don't think it would be choice induced
Speaker 1: preference change because he didn't pick the leg lamp. It
Speaker 1: was picked for him, and the studies have showed that
Speaker 1: when things are picked for you, this effect does not manifest.
Speaker 1: But I think he's doing a different kind of thing,
Speaker 1: which is um, the leg lamp is a symbol of
Speaker 1: his intellectual prowess and victory, and thus the leg lamp
Speaker 1: is itself beautiful and good. Yes, all right. And then
Speaker 1: of course there's the added wrinkle that his wife does
Speaker 1: not like the award and does not think it should
Speaker 1: be in the front of the house, which he regards
Speaker 1: as a personal insult because he has so deeply associated
Speaker 1: this lamp with his with his personal intellectual abilities mind power. Uh.
Speaker 1: This all also made me think of another great work,
Speaker 1: um that would be a Paradise Lost by by Milton.
Speaker 1: We have that line from Satan, the mind is its
Speaker 1: own place and in itself can make a heaven of
Speaker 1: hell a hell of heaven. That's yeah, that's that's really
Speaker 1: good because I've never interpreted this line in that way
Speaker 1: as like a reflection of an ex post facto justification
Speaker 1: to reduce cognitive dissonance. But you could absolutely read it
Speaker 1: that way. You can totally see it like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've always interpreted it, I guess as um, you know,
Speaker 1: just a statement about like, you know, the power to
Speaker 1: like Satan is asserting that he can make what he
Speaker 1: will of any situation. But yeah, you could interpret that
Speaker 1: much more in a cognitive bias way, where he's saying like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I made my decisions, and my decisions led
Speaker 1: me to hell, and thus I will engage in choice
Speaker 1: supportive biased reasoning that makes me think, actually, actually hell
Speaker 1: is good. It's good, you know, you know, uh, and
Speaker 1: that reduces the cognitive dissonance within Satan's soul. What if
Speaker 1: you just had a vision of help where everybody's in
Speaker 1: that where people are they're just all setting around, you know,
Speaker 1: being tortured or torturing each other, and like this place
Speaker 1: is great, this is great. I don't Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a fantastic image In with Yeah, we
Speaker 1: ended by justifying the ways of God demands, so it's
Speaker 1: generally what we seek to do in this uh this podcast. Wait, no,
Speaker 1: aren't we justifying the ways of Satan demand? I think
Speaker 1: that's what we did. Oh yeah, I guess that's all
Speaker 1: what we're doing here. Yeah, even better, Yeah, a lesser go,
Speaker 1: a lower goal. All right, Well, we'll go and close
Speaker 1: this one out. I think this will be a fun
Speaker 1: one for listeners to reflect on, especially since I think
Speaker 1: we actually had a stocking based experiment there. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can reflect on on on on gift giving and stockings
Speaker 1: and and so forth with the holiday season that we're
Speaker 1: passing through at the moment. Uh, certainly everybody can relate
Speaker 1: on some level to some of the mental mechanics that
Speaker 1: we're discussing here in this episode. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you'll find them wherever you get
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