Choice-Induced Preference
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Within the wide-ranging world of cognitive dissonance—which refers to our tendency to hold contradictory beliefs, perceptions of the world, and values based on those perceptions—there’s a sub-field called Choice-Induced Preference, or CIP.
CIP is predicated on the idea that, although it logically seems as if our preferences would determine our choices, in some cases the opposite is actually true. Rather than our preexisting standards and priorities determining which kind of appliance we purchase, clothing we wear, or mate we choose, in some cases we make selections randomly or based on other criteria, and then post hoc change our preferences to suit the choice we made.
This tendency may be especially pernicious in modern times, due to our ever-increasing range of options for just about everything.
From potential mate choices (via dating apps) to potential educational and career paths (due to widely published information about these paths, alongside online resources and training) to product category variations (the number of toothpaste options in the modern grocery store, alone, is intimidating), studies have shown that in many cases—particularly when we lack the information to make a fully informed decision or when we have no particular preference between the options available—we’ll choose randomly or based on unimportant criteria like the colors on the toothpaste box, or keywords a potential match on a dating site used or didn’t use. We then justify our choice after the fact.
That justification can subsequently become the seed of what we might call a new habit or reflex: we bought that one toothpaste that one time, so now that’s the toothpaste we buy even if there are other, potentially better, unexplored options available.
We can likewise develop a “type” when it comes to our dating habits, not because a particular sort of person is ideal for our priorities and needs, but because we dated someone with those attributes earlier in our lives and justified our decision to do so by recalibrating our sense of our preferences, accordingly.
Research has indicated that, although sometimes this change in preference posture can be temporary, it’s often long-lasting, and maybe even lifelong—if it’s never noticed and intentionally addressed.
Recent studies have shown that infants seem to do this, as well. So there’s a chance that this isn’t a socially learned behavior, but rather something that we’re biologically predisposed to do.
Which makes sense, if you think about how our cognitive processes work.
Decision fatigue refers to the energetic cost of choosing between multiple options, and it seemingly has cognitive, physiological, and behavioral components.
Which in practice means it can be exhausting to make choices, even if they’re small and relatively unimportant. And those costs can impact our thinking, our energy levels, our sense of wakefulness or depletion, and how we engage with internal and external stimuli.
Many of us reflexively develop heuristics—mental shortcuts—that we can use in decision-making situations, allowing us to shift the cognitive burden of choice-making from ourselves to our mind-tools; a bit like using an automated calculator to compute a difficult math problem, rather than working through that problem ourselves.
There’s evidence that facing a flurry of options can catalyze anxiety, cause us to feel insecure and uncertain, and diminish our motivation. It makes sense, then, that we might have in-built, choice-avoiding or choice-simplifying mental mechanisms, including our minds giving us permission to just grab something at random before telling us it was the correct choice—and that it will remain the correct choice, forever.
This at times beneficial tendency, though, can also lead to downsides.
Uninterrogated choices can lead us down undesirable paths that we continue to take forever, if we’re not careful. And that’s true of the sorts of people we date and marry, but also the types of toothpaste we buy, food we eat, rituals we perform, and so on.
Not questioning our choices, in other words, can help us avoid the myriad stresses of choosing, but it can also cause us to be so numb to our decision-making processes that we fail to ever make optimal choices based on our actual needs.
What’s more, this process can be manipulated by those who wish to sell us on their preferred ideas, behaviors, or products.
Recognizing that many people don’t have a hardline opinion on toothpaste, the companies that produce toothpaste may focus their resources on creating clever, noticeable packaging and manipulative advertising so that we choose them over all the other boxes on the shelf, and as a result create within us a habit of consuming their product predicated on an internalized but false sense that we prefer their brand.
This applies across the board, from products to political affiliations, to religious and other ideological beliefs. If we can be put on a particular path, even just once choosing a given option over all the others, we’re perhaps more likely to choose that option again in the future, over and over again, lacking some motivational force to do otherwise.
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