IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levarc/122247000000002336.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rationalization and Cognitive Dissonance: Do Choices Affect or Reflect Preferences?

Author

Listed:
  • M. Keith Chen

Abstract

Cognitive dissonance is one of the most influential theories in psychology, and its oldest experiential realization is choice-induced dissonance. In contrast to the economic approach of assuming a person's choices reveal their preferences, psychologists have claimed since 1956 that people alter their preferences to rationalize past choices by devaluing rejected alternatives and upgrading chosen ones. Here, I show that every study which has tested this preference-spreading effect has overlooked the potential that choices may reflect individual preferences. Specifically, these studies have implicitly assumed that subject's preferences can be measured perfectly, i.e., with infinite precision. Absent this, their methods, even with control groups, will mistakenly identify cognitive dissonance when there is none. Correctly interpreted, several prominent studies actually reject the presence of choice-induced dissonance. This suggests that mere choice may not always induce rationalization, a reversal that may significantly change the way we think about cognitive dissonance as a whole.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • M. Keith Chen, 2008. "Rationalization and Cognitive Dissonance: Do Choices Affect or Reflect Preferences?," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000002336, David K. Levine.
    • Handle: RePEc:cla:levarc:122247000000002336
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.dklevine.com/archive/refs4122247000000002336.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nalebuff, Barry, 1987. "Choose a Curtain, Duel-ity, Two Point Conversions, and More," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 157-163, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mikael Elinder, 2012. "Correcting mistakes: cognitive dissonance and political attitudes in Sweden and the United States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 235-249, October.
    2. Jonathan Lowell, 2012. "Managers and Moral Dissonance: Self Justification as a Big Threat to Ethical Management?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 105(1), pages 17-25, January.
    3. repec:jdm:journl:v:17:y:2022:i:4:p:768-796 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Fei Shi, 2015. "Choice-induced preference change and the free-choice paradigm: A clarification," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(1), pages 34-49, January.
    5. Steinar Holden, 2009. "Do Choices Affect Preferences? Some Doubts and New Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 2868, CESifo.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:1:p:34-49 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Bellemare, Marc F., 2012. "As You Sow, So Shall You Reap: The Welfare Impacts of Contract Farming," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 1418-1434.
    8. Arad, Ayala, 2013. "Past decisions do affect future choices: An experimental demonstration," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 267-277.
    9. Davis, Robert & Lang, Bodo, 2012. "Modeling the effect of self-efficacy on game usage and purchase behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 67-77.
    10. Christopher Turansick, 2023. "Random Utility, Repeated Choice, and Consumption Dependence," Papers 2302.05806, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    11. Holden, Steinar, 2009. "How Prevalent is Post-Decision Dissonance? Some Doubts and New Evidence," Memorandum 18/2009, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    12. Muhammad Abid & Ahmed Imran Hunjra & Babar Khalid, 2015. "The Impact of Safety Training on the Performance of Employees of an Electricity Distribution Company in Pakistan," Journal of Policy Research (JPR), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 1(3), pages 100-116, September.
    13. Bellemare, Marc F. & Holmberg, Andrew M., 2010. "The Determinants of Music Piracy in a Sample of College Students," MPRA Paper 23641, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Miller, Joshua Benjamin & Sanjurjo, Adam, 2018. "A Bridge from Monty Hall to the Hot Hand: Restricted Choice, Selection Bias, and Empirical Practice," OSF Preprints dmgtp, Center for Open Science.
    15. repec:cup:judgdm:v:17:y:2022:i:4:p:768-796 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Muhammad Abid & Ahmed Imran Hunjra & Babar Khalid, 2019. "The Impact of Safety Training on the Performance of Employees of an Electricity Distribution Company in Pakistan," Journal of Policy Research (JPR), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 5(1), pages 1-17, June.
    17. Géraldine Coppin & Sylvain Delplanque & Christelle Porcherot & Isabelle Cayeux & David Sander, 2012. "When Flexibility Is Stable: Implicit Long-Term Shaping of Olfactory Preferences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-13, June.
    18. Cherepanov, Vadim & Feddersen, Timothy & ,, 2013. "Rationalization," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(3), September.
    19. Bellemare, Marc F. & Lee, Yu Na & Novak, Lindsey, 2021. "Contract farming as partial insurance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bazerman, Max H. & Sezer, Ovul, 2016. "Bounded awareness: Implications for ethical decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 95-105.
    2. Dolly Chugh & Max Bazerman, 2007. "Bounded awareness: what you fail to see can hurt you," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, June.
    3. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2018. "Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(6), pages 2019-2047, November.
    4. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2019. "Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers," Papers 1902.01265, arXiv.org.
    5. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2005. "Individual Irrationality and Aggregate Outcomes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 43-66, Fall.
    6. Duncan James & Daniel Friedman & Christina Louie & Taylor O'Meara, 2018. "Dissecting The Monty Hall Anomaly," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1817-1826, July.
    7. Page, Scott E., 1998. "Let's make a deal," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 175-180, November.
    8. Miller, Joshua B. & Sanjurjo, Adam, 2021. "Is it a fallacy to believe in the hot hand in the NBA three-point contest?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    9. Walstad, William B. & Bosshardt, William, 2020. "Using Matrix Puzzles to Assess Student Understanding in Economics," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    10. Marcel Boumans, 2011. "The two-model problem in rational decision making," Rationality and Society, , vol. 23(3), pages 371-400, August.
    11. Peter R. Mueser & Donald Granberg, 1999. "The Monty Hall Dilemma Revisited: Understanding the Interaction of Problem Definition and Decision Making," Experimental 9906001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Jeryl L. Mumpower, 2011. "Playing Squash Against Ralph Keeney: Should Weaker Players Always Prefer Shorter Games?," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 8(1), pages 71-77, March.
    13. William E. Becker & William H. Greene, 2001. "Teaching Statistics and Econometrics to Undergraduates," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 169-182, Fall.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cla:levarc:122247000000002336. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David K. Levine (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dklevine.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.