Did you know that asking someone to analyse their choice can alter what their choice ends up being?
In a relatively small but interesting study, participants were asked to rate 6 strawberry jams that had earlier been rated by experts.
Some were then asked to analyse why they rated each jam that way, and told they would be asked to list reasons for liking and disliking each option.
When people just rated the jams without having to analyse their rating, their ratings were similar to the experts.
But for those asked to analyse their rating, it changed their evaluation of the jams.
According to the researchers:
“Left to their own devices, control subjects formed preferences for strawberry jams that corresponded well to the ratings of trained sensory experts. Subjects asked to think about why they liked or disliked the jams brought to mind reasons that did not correspond very well with the experts' ratings…(analysing their rating) changed people's minds about how they felt, presumably because certain aspects of the jams that were not central to their initial evaluations were weighted more heavily (e.g., their chunkiness or tartness).”
In other words, when we ask someone to reflect on a decision, it means they’ll likely consider things that weren’t important in their initial response, change it as a result and not necessarily for the better.
This and other studies remind us we need to be very careful about asking people to justify their choices. Asking someone to scrutinise a decision they wouldn’t normally think twice about can end up misleading everyone involved.
Ref: Wilson TD, Schooler JW. Thinking too much: introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1991 Feb;60(2):181-92. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.60.2.181. PMID: 2016668.
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