Choice-supportive bias or post-purchase rationalization is the tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected and/or to demote the forgone options. It is part of cognitive science, and is a distinct cognitive bias that occurs once a decision is made. For example, if a person chooses option A instead of option B, they are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying or ascribing new negative faults to option B. Conversely, they are also likely to notice and amplify the advantages of option A and not notice or de-emphasize those of option B.
What is remembered about a decision can be as important as the decision itself, especially in determining how much regret or satisfaction one experiences. Research indicates that the process of making and remembering choices yields memories that tend to be distorted in predictable ways.
In cognitive science, one predictable way that memories of choice options are distorted is that positive aspects tend to be remembered as part of the chosen option, whether or not they originally were part of that option, and negative aspects tend to be remembered as part of rejected options. Once an action has been taken, the ways in which we evaluate the effectiveness of what we did may be biased. It is believed this may influence our future decision-making. These biases may be stored as memories, which are attributions that we make about our mental experiences based on their subjective qualities, our prior knowledge and beliefs, our motives and goals, and the social context. True and false memories arise by the same mechanism because when the brain processes and stores information, it cannot tell the difference where they came from.
General definition The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were. In this respect, people tend to over attribute positive features to options they chose and negative features to options not chosen.
Theory Experiments in cognitive science and social psychology have revealed a wide variety of biases in areas such as statistical reasoning, social attribution, and memory.
Choice-supportive memory distortion is thought to occur during the time of memory retrieval and was the result of the belief that, "I chose this option, therefore it must have been the better option." Essentially, after a choice is made people tend to adjust their attitudes to be consistent with, the decision they have already made. It is also possible that choice-supportive memories arise because an individual is only paying attention to certain pieces of information when making a decision or to post-choice cognitive dissonance. In addition, biases can also arise because they are closely related to the high level cognitive operations and complex social interactions.
Memory distortions may sometimes serve a purpose because it may be in our interest to not remember some details of an event or to forget others altogether.
Making a selection The objective of a choice is generally to pick the best option. Thus, after making a choice, a person is likely to maintain the belief that the chosen option was better than the options rejected. Every choice has an upside and a downside. The process of making a decision mostly relies upon previous experiences. Therefore, a person will remember not only the decision made but also the reasoning behind making that decision.
Motivation Motivation may also play a role in this process because when a person remembers the option that they chose as being the best option, it should help reduce regret about their choice. This may represent a positive illusion that promotes well-being.
Cases when the individual is not in control There are cases where an individual is not always in control of which options are received. People often end up with options that were not chosen but, instead were assigned by others, such as job assignments made by bosses, course instructors assigned by a registrar, or vacation spots selected by other family members. However, being assigned (random or not) to an option leads to a different set of cognitions and memory attributions that tend to favor the alternative (non-received) option and may emphasize regret and disappointment. Assigned options: Making a choice or having a choice made for you by other people in your best interest can prompt memory attributions that support that choice. Current experiments show no choice-supportive memory bias for assigned options. However, choices which are made on a person's behalf in their best interest do show a tendency for choice-supportive memory bias. Random selection: People do not show choice-supportive biases when choices are made randomly for them. This is because choice-supportive memory bias tends to arise during the act of making the decision.
How different forms of misremembering create different types of choice-supportive biases
Misattribution Misattribution is a well-known commission error supported by researchers. It results in a type of choice-supportive bias when information is attributed to the wrong source. Consequently, the positive attributes of the forgone option are remembered as the positive attributes of the chosen option, or the negative attributes of the chosen option are remembered as the negative attributes of the foregone option. For example, if one had to choose between two pairs of trainers and the chosen pair fitted slightly tighter and the forgone option fitted perfectly, the chosen pair would be remembered as fitting perfectly whereas the forgone pair would be remembered as being slightly tighter (although this was not the case in reality)
While misattribution presupposes correct encoding and recall of the information in relation to a person's decision, the source of the information remains unclear or incorrect. Therefore, it is not to be mistaken with completely false information.
Fact distortion Fact distortion results in a type of choice-supportive bias when the facts belonging to the chosen option are remembered in a distorted manner. The distortion refers to the objective values and/or features of the chosen option being misremembered in a more preferential way to their actual values. Alternatively, the forgone option can be misremembered as being significantly less preferential then their actual values. An example of fact distortion would be if you have to choose between buying one out of two cars which can both drive at a maximum speed of 130 mph, the foregone car would be remembered with a maximum speed of 100 mph, whereas the chosen car will be remembered with a maximum speed of 160 mph. Consequently, the facts concerning both cars have been distorted.
There are varieties of fact distortion that remain contested throughout the literature; as a result, there is no consensus on how it works. Some authors argue that the distortion mainly occurs when the favoured option is misremembered more preferentially, whereas other researchers argue that memory distortion does not occur or is only likely to take place during the post-decision stage. Overall, some studies have argued that holding the belief that distortion cannot take place (as soon as the decision is made) means that facts cannot be distorted.
Selective forgetting Selective forgetting results in a form of choice-supportive bias when information is selectively forgotten. In this respect, the positive attributes of the chosen option and the negative attributes of the forgone option are retained in memory at a higher rate and the alternatives are displaced from memory at a faster rate. An example of selective forgetting would be correctly remembering that your chosen pair of trainers were aesthetically pleasing, but forgetting that they were slightly tight. This omission error may be related to the limited capacity of memory over time, otherwise known as transience.
False memory False memory in the context of choice-supportive biases is when items that were not part of the original decision are remembered as being presented. If these entirely new items are positive, they will be remembered as belonging to the chosen option and if they are negative, they will be remembered as belonging to the forgone option. For example, a chosen pair of shoes might be remembered as good for running, although there was no information presented in respect to the shoes running capabilities.
This type of error is fundamentally different to the other types of misremembering in choice-supportive bias because it is not due to correct encoding and later confusion, but it is due to a completely false memory. This type of bias means that falsely remembered events can affect future attitudes and possibly decision-making.
Potential influential factors
Alignability Alignability in the context of choice-supportive bias refers to whether both options have directly comparable features. For example, an alignable characteristic could be whether both options can be measured in centimetres. In the context of decision making, alignability can influence choices or the ability to make a similarity judgement of a potential option. The alignment process enables a person to draw similarities and difference which impact their choice-supportive biases. Research to support this can be displayed by the following example: when given a choice between two brands of popcorn, participants were more likely to choose the one with the superior alignable differences, such as "pops in its own bag" compared with "requires a microwaveable bowl" than the one with superior non-alignable differences, such as "not likely to burn" compared with those containing "some citric acid"
Delay The extent of the delay between encoding is a potential factor that could affect choice-supportive bias. If there is a larger delay between encoding (i.e. viewing the information about the options) and retrieval (i.e. memory tests) it is likely to result in more biased choices rather than the impact of the actual choice on choice-supportive bias. Some studies have found that the extent of false memories increases over time. Whereas other researchers have shown that a 2-day delay between making choices and assessment of memory resulted in reasonably high (86%) recognition accuracy. Therefore, these findings indicate that the influence of delays on choice-supportive bias remain varied, and the influence of delays could affect different types of memory distortions differently.
Beliefs about the choices one has made This factor refers to a person's perceived decisions concerning the choices they made, more specifically this includes memories that have been falsified to reflect a selected choice that the person did not actually make. Research illustrates that people favour the options they think they have chosen and remember the attributes of their "chosen choice" more vividly and favourably. Essentially, this influences assesses how one believes the choices they made affects their subsequent memories. As a result, people's memories are biased in favour of the option they thought they had selected rather than their actual choices.
Individual differences Individual differences in choice-supportive bias affect the way a person remembers their options and the way they make decisions and therefore it may influence the degree to which a person engages in choice-supportive bias. Factors such as age and individual characteristics can influence an individual's cognitive abilities, personality and thus their overall choice-supportive biases. For example, it has been observed by correlations that people with better performance in tests of frontal or executive functioning were less prone to choice-supportive memory.
Relation to self