انگیختگی ادراکی ایجاد حافظه های جدید اپیزودیک را بهبود می بخشد

People tend to distort their evaluation of decision-relevant information in favor of the currently preferred alternative. We test whether this predecisional distortion of information is amplified by increased commitment to that current preference. We manipulated commitment, without changing the preferred option’s content, by requiring participants to indicate their preference either by circling or by darkening a sizable box (cf. feature-positive effect). Experiment 1 revealed that the effort to darken substantially increased predecisional distortion. Experiment 2 ruled out elaboration as an explanation for the effect of darkening. Experiment 3 showed that, among participants who attributed the darkening effort to an external source, predecisional distortion decreased when the source was believed to summon effort. These findings suggest that the developing commitment to a tentatively preferred alternative is one driver of predecisional distortion.

For many decades and in several settings psychologists have found that people tend to systematically favor information that is consistent with their preferred beliefs (e.g., Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). In decision making, which is the focus of the present work, biased information processing to support a current preference has taken three forms: (a) seeking information that favors the currently preferred alternative, exemplified by the confirmation bias (Klayman & Ha, 1987); (b) ignoring, dismissing or refuting contrary information (Edwards & Smith, 1996); and (c) biasing the interpretation of ineluctable information toward supporting the current preference (Holyoak and Simon, 1999 and Russo et al., 1996). It is this last phenomenon, the biased evaluation of information, that is our focus. The most familiar examples of this bias occur when the preferred belief is strong. During a sports contest fans of one team may cry foul while the opposing team’s supporters observe fair play (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954), or after a Presidential debate Democrats believe that the Democratic candidate won yet Republicans see their candidate as the victor (Munro et al., 2002). In contrast to the common case of a long-standing, deeply held belief whose defense via biased information processing might be expected, we investigate a situation in which the current belief is an emerging preference for one alternative over another during a decision. Our focus is on the effect of increasing the commitment to that developing preference on the distorted evaluation of new information, and whether that predecisional distortion of information can occur automatically.