Choice both affects and reflects preferences

Abstract

The free-choice paradigm is a widely used paradigm in psychology. It has been used to show that after a choice between two similarly pleasant stimuli, the pleasantness of the chosen one tends to increase, whereas the pleasantness of the rejected one tends to decrease—a spreading of alternatives. However, the methodological validity of the free-choice paradigm to study choice-induced preference change has recently been seriously questioned [Chen, K. M., & Risen, J. L. (2010). How choice affects and reflects preferences: Revisiting the free-choice paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 573–594. doi:10.1037/a0020217]. According to this criticism, the classically reported spreading of alternatives between the first and second rating sessions cannot be unambiguously interpreted to reflect a true change in preferences and can be observed even for completely static preferences. Here, we used two measurement sequences, a classical Rating 1–choice–Rating 2 sequence and a control Rating 1–Rating 2–choice sequence, to disentangle the spreading of alternatives driven by the effect of choice from the artefactual effect highlighted by Chen and Risen. In two studies using different stimulus material (faces and odours), we find that choice has a robust modulatory impact on preferences for rejected odours, but not for chosen odours and not for faces.

Keywords:

• Preference
• Choice
• Decision making
• Cognitive dissonance
• Sequence of measurements
• RCR
• RRC

The authors thank Maria-Inés Velazco, Christian Margot, and all the members of the Human Perception and Bioresponses Department of the Research and Development Division of Firmenich, SA, for their precious advice and their theoretical and technical competence. The authors also thank Ludivine Hausler for her help in data collection, Ben Meuleman for his advice regarding statistical analyses, and Bastiaan Oud for his comments on this paper.

This research was supported by the National Center of Competence in Research for the Affective Sciences, financed by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number 51NF40-104897], hosted by the University of Geneva, and by grants from Firmenich, SA, to David Sander and Patrik Vuilleumier.

Notes

¹ According to the studies, the rated dimension can vary a bit; it can, for example, be the “desirability” of the alternatives, such as in Brehm's (1956) original study. Other variations exist in terms of the exact task required from participants: It can be a ranking rather than a rating of the stimuli, such as in Chen and Risen's (2010) study.

² Such a procedure allows the extension from traditional results found while measuring “pleasantness” or “desirability” to the dimension of “cuteness,” which is equivalent to “attractiveness” in the context of infants' evaluation (e.g., Hildebrant, 1983).

³ The repeated measures ANOVA on the factors choice (chosen, rejected) and sequence (RCR, RRC) on these scores did not reach significance, F(1, 99) = 0.819, p = .367. However, as mentioned before, because of the possibility that differential psychological processes underlie postchoice hedonic modulation for chosen and rejected stimuli, we have conducted separate planned contrasts for chosen and rejected stimuli.

⁴ The repeated measures ANOVA on the factors choice (chosen, rejected) and sequence (RCR, RRC) on these scores did not reach significance, F(1,59) = 2.357, p = .013. However, as mentioned before, because of the possibility that differential psychological processes underlie postchoice hedonic modulation for chosen and rejected stimuli, we have conducted separate planned contrasts for chosen and rejected stimuli.