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Related Concept Videos

Hindsight Biases01:12

Hindsight Biases

Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?
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Cause and Effect

While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?
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Blind Procedures

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Reason and Intuition01:37

Reason and Intuition

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Decision Making01:20

Decision Making

Decision-making is a fundamental cognitive process that involves evaluating alternatives and selecting among them. This process can range from simple choices, such as deciding what to wear, to complex decisions, like choosing a major in college or a career path. The complexity of the decision often dictates the approach we use, which can be broadly categorized into two types: automatic and controlled decision-making.
Automatic decision-making is fast, intuitive, and relies on gut feelings...
Decision Making: Traditional Method01:14

Decision Making: Traditional Method

The process of hypothesis testing based on the traditional method includes calculating the critical value, testing the value of the test statistic using the sample data, and interpreting these values.
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Related Experiment Video

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Online Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Dorsomedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognition Decision Making, and Cognitive Dissonance
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Published on: December 5, 2025

Do decisions shape preference? Evidence from blind choice.

Tali Sharot1, Cristina M Velasquez, Raymond J Dolan

  • 1Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom. t.sharot@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

Psychological Science
|August 4, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Choice influences personal preferences, challenging the idea that decisions merely reveal existing desires. This study demonstrates that the act of choosing, even blindly, alters preferences, suggesting a reciprocal relationship between choices and preferences.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Science

Background:

  • Psychological theories debate whether choices shape preferences or merely reflect them.
  • Critics argue that previous studies on choice-induced preference change are methodologically flawed.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To directly investigate whether the act of making a choice alters preferences, independent of preexisting desires.
  • To differentiate between preference revelation and preference formation in decision-making.

Main Methods:

  • Participants rated vacation destinations before and after making a blind choice.
  • A control group had a computer make the decision for them.
  • Preexisting preferences were assessed before the choice manipulation.

Main Results:

  • Participant preferences significantly changed after making a blind choice.
  • Preferences did not change when a computer made the decision.
  • This dissociation supports the idea that the decision-making process itself impacts preferences.

Conclusions:

  • The act of choosing actively shapes preferences, rather than solely revealing them.
  • Decision-making is not just a consequence of preferences but also a cause of preference change.
  • Findings challenge critiques of choice-induced preference change and support its role in preference formation.