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Related Experiment Videos

Remembering chosen and assigned options.

Mara Mather1, Eldar Shafir, Marcia K Johnson

  • 1Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA. mather@cats.ucsc.edu

Memory & Cognition
|June 11, 2003
PubMed
Summary
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People exhibit choice-supportive memory, favoring chosen options. However, this memory bias does not extend to assigned options, suggesting context-dependent recall heuristics influence how we remember past decisions.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Science
  • Memory Studies

Background:

  • Previous research indicates a choice-supportive memory bias, where individuals recall chosen options more favorably than unchosen ones.
  • This bias suggests a general motivation to view past choices in a positive light.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether a similar memory bias exists for assigned options compared to chosen options.
  • To explore the underlying heuristics that influence memory recall for choices versus assignments.

Main Methods:

  • Experimental design comparing memory recall for chosen versus assigned options.
  • Analysis of feature attribution and memory accuracy for both selected and assigned alternatives.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • No evidence of choice-supportive memory bias was found for assigned options.
  • Memory recall for assigned options was influenced by a vividness heuristic, leading to misattribution of features to unassigned alternatives.
  • This heuristic did not result in a positive bias for the assigned option itself.

Conclusions:

  • Memory biases are context-dependent, differing between choices and assignments.
  • Heuristics, such as the vividness heuristic, play a significant role in shaping memory recall and feature attribution.
  • Findings challenge the notion of a universal choice-supportive memory bias, highlighting nuanced cognitive processes in decision recall.