choice blindness experiment

Choice Blindness: Do You Notice If You Get What You Choose?

Choice blindness is widespread..

Posted August 14, 2023 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

People sometimes don’t notice that they get what they did not choose.
Experiments indicate that our free will may in face be limited.
We think our preferences affect our choices; often, however, our choices affect our preferences.

Imagine that you take part in the following experiment: An experimenter presents two black-and-white photos of young women and asks you to point at the one you find most attractive. You look at the pictures and point to the one you find most appealing.

The experimenter then places the photos face down on the table and slides the card you selected toward you. As you pick up the photo, you are now asked to explain why you chose the woman in the image.

Do you think you would notice if the photo you pick up is not the one you chose?

You're probably confident that you would. But it's most likely that you would not.

This experiment was conducted by cognitive scientists Petter Johansson and Lars Hall and their colleagues at Lund University. The pivotal point is that in certain instances, the card received by the subject is switched—utilizing a simple magic trick involving double cards—so that the picture to be justified is the one that was not initially chosen.

The astonishing outcome is that approximately 90 percent of the subjects failed to notice the substitution, even though the women in the pictures look very different. Moreover, subjects did not hesitate to justify why the woman depicted in the card they hold was most attractive, even if it was the other woman they originally chose. Scientists have termed this phenomenon “choice blindness."

A series of experiments by the same group has revealed that choice blindness occurs in various contexts: For example, it takes place in a supermarket when choosing between two jams that you are offered to taste. Despite significant differences between the jams, most customers still do not notice that the jam they taste a second time is the one they did not initially choose. Again, they happily explain why they chose that jam.

One of the most thought-provoking experiments pertains to how easily we can be swayed to change our political opinion. A few weeks before the 2010 parliamentary election in Sweden, a number of people were surveyed on the street about their intended party vote. They were then asked to fill in a form indicating their stance on 12 political issues of the day, using a “agree/do not agree” scale, such as tax rates and nuclear power.

Unbeknownst to the subjects, the experimenter secretly filled in another form, which was then swapped with the original one without the subject noticing. In this new form, some of the responses were changed on the scale to be on the other side of the party bloc boundary , compared to what the subject had originally responded. Subjects were then asked to give their reasons for marking the questions where the answers had been manipulated.

Very few discovered that any of the answers had been changed (92 percent accepted the manipulated form as their own). Surprisingly, for 48 percent of the subjects, their answers indicated a shift toward supporting the opposing party due to the manipulation, compared to what they had originally indicated. This figure is significantly higher than the 10 percent that political scientists and politicians usually think can be influenced before an election.

When the trick was revealed to the subjects, many admitted they were not as ideologically committed as they had thought. Conversely, many were relieved that they had not actually switched sides, saying, "Phew, I'm not a conservative after all!"

You think you choose what you prefer. But sometimes you prefer what you choose. To prove it, all you have to do is pull out photos of yourself from a decade ago. The hairstyle and clothing you wore at that time seemed like your personal choices. However, in hindsight, you realize how much you were influenced by the fashion trend of the time, and that the choices you made were heavily influenced by social norms.

It can be demonstrated that your choices also affect your preferences: In a follow-up to the photo selection experiment involving women, subjects were asked to choose between the same pair of faces at a later date. Remarkably, for those pairs where subjects were given the photo that they had originally not chosen, they now selected that photo significantly more often. In other words, the mere belief they had previously chosen the other woman made them choose her on the later occasion.

The experiments presented here pose major problems for those who assert that humans have completely free will. What we perceive as free choice is in many cases dictated by mechanisms of which we are unaware, and perhaps cannot even become aware of. Our perception of free will may largely be an illusion. It is even uncertain if a "self" governs our actions. In fact, the choice blindness experiments show that we rely more on what we see with our eyes than what we were thinking when we made the choice.

Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S. & Olsson, A. (2005): Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task, Science 310, 116-119.

Hall, L., Johansson, P., Tärning, B., Sikström, S., & Deutgen, T. (2010). Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea. Cognition , 117 (1), 54-61.

Hall, L. Johansson, P. & Strandberg, T. (2012): Lifting the veil of morality: Choice blindness and attitude reversals on a self-transforming survey, PLoS One 7 , e45457.

https://www.ted.com/talks/petter_johansson_do_you_really_know_why_you_do_what_you_do

Peter Gärdenfors, Ph.D. , is a professor of cognitive science at Lund University, Sweden.

Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Online Therapy
United States
Brooklyn, NY
Chicago, IL
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
Asperger's
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Eating Disorders
Passive Aggression
Personality
Goal Setting
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Child Development
Self Tests NEW
Therapy Center
Diagnosis Dictionary
Types of Therapy

There’s been a fundamental shift in how we define adulthood—and at what pace it occurs. PT’s authors consider how a once iron-clad construct is now up for grabs—and what it means for young people’s mental health today.

Emotional Intelligence
Gaslighting
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience

Explore Psychology

What Is Choice Blindness? Definition and Examples

Choice blindness is a psychological phenomenon in which people fail to notice a mismatch between their intended choice and the choice presented to them. In other words, it is a surprising tendency to be unaware that our choices and preferences have been changed or manipulated after we’ve already made a choice. This tendency suggests that…

This tendency suggests that even if we don’t get the thing we actually chose, there are many times we won’t even notice. For example, if you order something at a restaurant and get something slightly different, you might not notice the discrepancy.

In this article

Definition of Choice Blindness

One definition suggests that:

“Choice blindness happens when people fail to notice mismatches between their intentions and the consequences of decisions” (Lachaud, Jacquet, & Baratgin, 2022).

Choice blindness is a form of introspection illusion. Essentially, this illusion suggests that we have direct insight into the origins of our mental states. We treat our own introspections as absolute truth while also discounting other people’s introspections as mistaken or unreliable.

So when you order a turkey sandwich at your local delicatessen but get a ham sandwich instead, you’ll either not notice the mistake or invent reasons why the ham sandwich was what you actually wanted in the first place.

Choice blindness underscores how factors like unconscious decision-making, memory distortions, and perceptual errors affect our decision-making. It also provides insight into our own self-awareness regarding the choices that we make.

The Psychology of Choice

The psychology of choice seeks to understand how people make decisions when asked to choose between two or more options. While we might like to think that each decision is something carefully made using rationality and logic, there are actually a whole host of influences that play a role, many of which can be quite irrational.

Conscious influences play a part, but so can unconscious forces. Our memories, past experiences , and cognitive biases also affect our choices.

Even subtle factors like priming can impact the decisions we make. Priming happens when exposure to one stimulus influences how we respond to a subsequent stimulus.

Biases also affect decisions. Some common types of bias that impact choices include the anchoring bias , confirmation bias, and ingroup bias .

Even the number of options we have to choose from can affect our decision. To few choices means we might miss out on good options, but too many choices can leave us feeling overwhelmed and indecisive.

Research on Choice Blindness

The experiments on choice blindness, often associated with the work of researchers Johansson, Hall, Sikstrom, and Olsson, involve a set of studies designed to investigate the phenomenon and its underlying mechanisms. One notable experiment typically follows these key elements:

The Experiment

Participants are presented with a choice between two options. In one case, this involved choosing between two different female faces. After making their selection, the participants are then handed the chosen item, which is visually different from what they initially selected. For instance, if they chose face A, they might be given face B.

Manipulation and Misdirection

The critical aspect of the experiment involves introducing a form of misdirection or manipulation. Participants are engaged in a conversation or distraction immediately after making their choice, diverting their attention away from the actual switch of the chosen item.

The misdirection is crucial to ensure that participants remain unaware of the mismatch between their intended choice and the received item.

Revealing the Discrepancy

Following the distraction phase, participants are asked to explain or justify their choice. During this process, researchers reveal the switch by showing the participants what they actually received.

Surprisingly, many participants fail to notice the discrepancy and may offer explanations for a choice they did not make. In one study, just 13% of the participants actually noticed that the image they received did not match the one they had chosen.

Analysis and Implications

Researchers analyze the responses to understand the extent of choice blindness and the factors influencing it. The findings shed light on the malleability of our awareness regarding decision outcomes, emphasizing the role of cognitive processes, memory, and external influences.

The experiments not only provide empirical evidence for choice blindness but also offer insights into the limitations of introspection and self-awareness in understanding our own choices.

In other variations of the experiments, researchers have demonstrated they could produce the same effects with food and political candidates.

These experiments showcase how individuals can be blind to the discrepancies between their intended choices and the outcomes, illustrating the complexity of decision-making processes and the surprising gaps in our awareness.

Causes of Choice Blindness

Choice blindness is influenced by a number of causes. Decision-making is a complex process that involves numerous processes and has many influences. No wonder we aren’t always aware of all of the factors that play a role in affecting our choices. Some key causes include:

Cognitive Biases

Cognitive biases are errors in thinking. Many different cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias and choice-supportive bias, can contribute to choice blindness. These biases shape our interpretation and memory of choices, leading individuals to overlook inconsistencies between their intended choices and the presented outcomes.

What we are paying attention to while choosing can also play a major role in choice blindness. If your attention is diverted by something else, you won’t analyze your choices as much. Because your attention is distracted, you’re less likely to notice if the option presented doesn’t match your original selection.

Memory Distortion

Memory is not a perfect record of our experiences. Choice blindness experiments reveal how memory distortion can occur. People often find ways to justify the mismatch, even inventing explanations for why they chose what they did. This memory distortion further obscures the awareness of the choice-outcome mismatch.

Perceptual Errors

Humans may experience perceptual errors in recognizing visual or sensory differences between the chosen and received items. The brain might fill in gaps or overlook inconsistencies, especially if the differences are subtle. This contributes to individuals failing to notice the mismatch between their intended choices and the presented outcomes.

Environmental Factors

External factors, including social pressure or the experimental context, can influence decision-making and contribute to choice blindness. People often align their explanations with social expectations or context cues, further obscuring their awareness of the actual outcomes.

Cognitive Dissonance

When faced with a choice-outcome discrepancy, individuals may experience cognitive dissonance , a psychological discomfort resulting from conflicting beliefs or attitudes. To resolve this discomfort, individuals might unconsciously alter their perception of the initial choice to align with the received outcome.

Examples of Choice Blindness

Choice blindness can manifest in various everyday situations, demonstrating how individuals may fail to recognize discrepancies between their intended choices and the outcomes. Here are some common examples:

Menu Choices

Imagine ordering a specific dish at a restaurant and receiving a visually similar but different item. If the waiter presents it confidently and you’re engaged in conversation, you may not immediately notice the switch. Later, when asked about your choice, you might explain the dish you thought you ordered.

Shopping Selections

When shopping, especially online, you may choose a particular product based on its features or appearance. However, due to packaging similarities or mislabeling, you might receive a different variant or brand.

Choice blindness may make you rationalize the received item as the one you initially intended to purchase.

Clothing Preferences

While shopping for clothes, you may select an outfit but then get distracted chatting with friends or checking on your phone. If the cashier hands you a slightly different garment, you might not even notice that it isn’t what you originally picked out.

In this scenario, you might fail to notice the substitution and later explain why they chose the received clothing item.

Survey Responses

Participants in surveys or interviews may provide answers that align with social expectations or perceived norms, even if those responses differ from their true preferences. This aligns with choice blindness, where individuals unknowingly offer justifications for choices they did not make.

Product Customization

Imagine that you are customizing a product online where you select specific features, colors, or options. However, the final product may differ due to technical glitches or user interface issues.

Choice blindness might make you unaware of the discrepancy when receiving the product, and you might even try to find ways to rationalize your choices during post-purchase questioning.

Political Preferences

In politics, individuals might express support for a particular policy or candidate but fail to notice changes to their stated preferences. This could happen in surveys or discussions where external influences subtly alter their responses. This means that their stated choices and actual preferences don’t align.

How to Overcome Choice Blindness

Overcoming choice blindness involves developing awareness, critical thinking, and mindfulness in decision-making processes. Here are some strategies that individuals can use to help reduce the effects of choice blindness:

Slow Down and Reflect

Take the time to slow down and reflect on your choices. Avoid making decisions hastily, especially in situations where distractions are present. Creating a mental pause before confirming a choice allows for better self-awareness and reduces the likelihood of overlooking discrepancies.

Increased Attention to Details

Pay close attention to the details of your choices and the outcomes. Be vigilant in observing visual or sensory differences between the selected option and the received item. Training yourself to notice subtleties can enhance your ability to catch inconsistencies.

Double-Check Choices

Develop a habit of double-checking your choices, especially when misdirection or distractions are likely. Verifying your decisions before moving forward can help ensure that your perceived choices align with your actual intentions.

Mindful Decision-Making

Practice mindful decision-making by being fully present in the moment when making choices. Minimize external distractions and focus on the task at hand.

Mindfulness enhances your awareness of the decision-making process, reducing the chances of falling victim to choice blindness.

Question Your Choices

Regularly question and examine your choices, motivations, and preferences. By engaging in self-reflection, you can identify potential biases, social influences, or cognitive factors that may impact your decisions. Actively challenging your own thought processes contributes to greater self-awareness.

Seek Feedback from Others

When possible, seek feedback from others about your choices. External perspectives can provide valuable insights and highlight potential discrepancies. Discussing decisions with friends, colleagues, or mentors adds an external layer of awareness to your choices.

Educate Yourself on Cognitive Biases

Familiarize yourself with common cognitive biases that influence decision-making. Understanding biases such as confirmation bias or choice-supportive bias can empower you to recognize and counteract their effects on your perceptions of choices.

Keep a Decision-Making Journal

Maintain a journal where you record your decisions, reasons for making them, and the outcomes. Periodically reviewing this journal allows you to track patterns, identify any discrepancies, and gain a deeper understanding of your decision-making tendencies.

By incorporating these strategies into their decision-making processes, you can enhance your ability to recognize and overcome choice blindness.

Key Points to Remember

Choice blindness refers to the phenomenon where individuals are unaware of discrepancies between their intended choices and the outcomes they receive.
It highlights the subconscious nature of decision-making, influenced by cognitive biases, distractions, and memory distortions.
Everyday examples include ordering at a restaurant, online shopping, and expressing preferences in surveys.
Strategies to overcome choice blindness include slowing down, paying attention to details, questioning choices, and seeking feedback from others.

Zhaoyang, R., & Martire, L. M. (2021). The influence of family and friend confidants on marital quality in older couples. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 76 (2), 380–390. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbaa029

Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310 (5745), 116–119. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1111709

Lachaud, L., Jacquet, B., & Baratgin, J. (2022). Reducing Choice-Blindness? An Experimental Study Comparing Experienced Meditators to Non-Meditators. European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education , 12 (11), 1607–1620. https://doi.org/10.3390/ejihpe12110113

Sagana, A., Sauerland, M., & Merckelbach, H. (2018). Warnings to Counter Choice Blindness for Identification Decisions: Warnings Offer an Advantage in Time but Not in Rate of Detection. Frontiers in psychology , 9 , 981. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00981

Sagana, A., Sauerland, M., & Merckelbach, H. (2014). Memory impairment is not sufficient for choice blindness to occur. Frontiers in psychology , 5 , 449. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00449

Rieznik, A., Moscovich, L., Frieiro, A., Figini, J., Catalano, R., Garrido, J. M., Álvarez Heduan, F., Sigman, M., & Gonzalez, P. A. (2017). A massive experiment on choice blindness in political decisions: Confidence, confabulation, and unconscious detection of self-deception. PloS one , 12 (2), e0171108. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171108

Explore Psychology covers psychology topics to help people better understand the human mind and behavior. Our team covers studies and trends in the modern world of psychology and well-being.

Examples of the Serial Position Effect

The serial position effect refers to the tendency to be able to better recall the first and last items on a list than the middle items. Psychology Hermann Ebbinghaus noted during his research that his ability to remember the items on a list depended on the position of the item on the list. An example…

An image of two brains on a scale to represent cognitive biases.

Cognitive Bias: Common Types and How to Avoid Them

A cognitive bias is an unconscious systematic pattern of thinking that can result in errors in judgment. These biases stem from the brain’s limited resources and need to simplify the world to make faster decisions. Such biases are often the result of limitations or problems in memory, attention, and information processing. While such biases often…

Examples of Confirmation Bias (and How to Overcome It)

Looking for information that confirms what you already believe? That’s the confirmation bias at work. Here’s why it happens and how it affects how we think.

Fundamental Attribution Error: Definition and Examples

The fundamental attribution error is a type of cognitive bias that leads people to overemphasize personality and underemphasize situational factors.

Woman adding to her crystallized intelligence by reading a book

What Is Crystallized Intelligence? Definition and Examples

Crystallized intelligence is all about what you’ve learned. Here’s why the wisdom you’ve picked up along the way is so important.

What Is the Barnum Effect in Psychology?

The Barnum effect is a type of cognitive bias that involves a tendency to believe that vague, general personality descriptions apply specifically and uniquely to them. Horoscopes are a good example of this phenomenon. While each horoscope is general, generic, and can apply to virtually anyone, people often feel like their own horoscope is strangely…

Thinking and Intelligence

Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness

Learning objectives.

Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving, including choice blindness

Choice Blindness

Some choices are easy (“Do you want pepperoni or anchovies on your pizza?”) and some choices are hard (“Are you going to get Amazon Echo or Google Home?”), but most of us like to think that we “know our own mind”—that is, when we finally make a choice, we are clear about our decision. Research by psychologists in Sweden shows that this confidence in our own self-knowledge may not always be justified.

Choice blindness is the failure to recall a choice immediately after we have made that choice. If you go to an ice cream store, order a chocolate cone, and then accept a strawberry cone without noticing, that is choice blindness. If you go to an electronics store, select the new 55-inch Vizio television, and then fail to notice when they bring out (and expect you to pay for) the far more expensive 55-inch Sony television, that is choice blindness. If you order a burger and fries, and then don’t notice when soup-and-salad is placed in front of you, that is choice blindness.

As you have seen, Johannson, Hall, and their colleagues [1] found a method for inducing choice blindness in a laboratory setting, but they wanted to do more than simply demonstrate that people sometimes forget their choices. As psychological scientists, their goal is to explore an interesting phenomenon (i.e., choice blindness) to understand why it happens and to see if it tells us anything new about the way our minds work.

The Attraction Preference Experiment

You can learn the basics of the experiment conducted by Petter Johannson, Lars Hall and their colleagues by watching the following video [2] .

Johannson and Hall were curious to see how often people noticed that there was a mismatch between their choice and the picture they were told they had chosen. Here’s how the experiment worked. Imagine that you are sitting across a table from an experimenter, who is dressed in a long sleeved black shirt. He shows you a pair of pictures of head-and-shoulder shots of two males or two females. On each trial, you indicate which of the two people in the pictures you find more attractive. After you make your choice, the experimenter hands you the card you just pointed at and asks you to explain why you preferred this person.

Except that this didn’t always happen this way. Using a magician’s trick, on some trials, when the experimenter handed you the card, he actually handed you the card you did NOT choose.

You can view the transcript for “BBC Choice Blindness” here (opens in new window) .

The researchers tested 120 college students (70 female, 50 male). The pictures were all of women. As the video showed, they made their choice and then immediately explained the reasons for their preference. Only 13% of the switches were detected immediately. Approximately 10% more switches were mentioned “retrospectively”, where a participant initially justified choosing the switched face, but later indicated some suspicion that the wrong picture had been presented. Most participants who detected a switch attributed it to a technical error rather than suspecting that it was part of the research procedure.

But is it Real? The Value of Replication

The video you just watched described an experiment with a surprising result: more than 75% of the time, people make a choice and then, without indicating that anything is amiss, they proceed to justify a choice they did not make. But how solid is this study and how much can we believe these results? Maybe the choice blindness experiment reported real results, but (even assuming that the experimenters were completely honest and careful) could this have just been a weird outcome that will never happen again? In other words, is this a reliable result or just a fluke?

There is only one way to determine if a phenomenon is reliable, and that is replication . If you can’t replicate an effect, then you shouldn’t waste people’s time reading about it in a scientific paper.

There are at least three different types of replication.

Direct Replication : Conduct exactly the same study again, usually with new participants from the same population as the original study. A successful replication would produce results similar to those in the original study.
Systematic Replication : Conduct a study that is similar to the original one, but using slightly different methods or stimuli.
Conceptual Replication : Conduct a very different study that still tests the original idea. In the current context, a conceptual replication would test the choice blindness idea using a method that did not involve choosing attractive people.

So, can you believe the choice blindness phenomenon?

In the years just before they published their 2005 study, the experimenters conducted two similar studies. For these studies, the pictures were presented on a computer screen, and the computer switched the pictures on the critical trials, so no magic was necessary. The results were very similar to the results of the study reported in the video above.

When the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made the video, they reconstructed the experiment in a form very similar to the original. They reported that 80% of the participants did not notice any switching of pictures—a result very similar to the original. Unfortunately, without a published report of the study, it is impossible to know if the scientific standards of the original study had been maintained.

In 2014, researchers at the National University of Singapore reported a study similar to the experiment shown in the video. The stimuli were presented using a computer rather than a live experimenter. In addition to choosing one of the two faces, the participants rated their confidence in their choice and they typed their explanation of their preference. The faces were all of Caucasian women (as in the original study), but the participants were all of Asian descent (ethnic backgrounds: Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese). Their results were similar to those of the original study.

Here is video showing another study by Johannson and Hall. The video has no sound—only subtitles.

You can view the transcript for “Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions” here (opens in new window) .

Link to Learning

Visit this link to watch another video related about conceptual replication, this time related to taste.

From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration

What you saw in the video is what a scientist would call a phenomenon—that is, a behavior that happens under certain conditions. The video showed that, if an experimenter is tricky enough, he or she can get people to justify choices that they never made. If you find this phenomenon interesting, then it may be worth your time to try to find out why it happens. (If you didn’t think it was interesting, then you will probably move on to find something that inspires you.)

Any of the choices in the list above could explain—fully or in part—the choice blindness phenomenon, but each idea would need to be tested. That is where the science comes in. The starting point for science is something interesting (a surprising phenomenon). If we are motivated to ask why something happened, then we jump into the real work of science: exploring possible explanations.

The next scientific step systematically (i.e., carefully and with specific purposes) changes elements of the procedures or stimuli to see how these changes affect the results. Remember that our dependent variable is the probability that the change in faces will be detected. So now we try to learn more about change blindness by seeing how changing specific details (independent variables) either increase or decrease people’s likelihood of noticing the switch in faces.

Two Variables: Time and Similarity

In the 2005 study, Johansson and Hall looked at two interesting variables that might influence detection of the mismatch. First, how rushed were the participants to make their decision? They gave some people only 2 seconds to choose the more attractive person. Others were given 5 seconds, and another group was given as long as people wanted (free choice). Should more time make someone more likely or less likely to notice that they have been given the picture they did not choose?

The second variable was how similar the two faces were to one another. In some cases, the two faces were similar to each other in general features, while in other cases the two faces were more distinctly different. If the two faces are quite different, how should that affect your ability to notice?

Two sets of images. One shows incredibly similar faces of caucasian women, while the next pair shows dissimilar female faces.

If we put the two manipulated variables (time and similarity) together, that gives us six conditions:

Graph showing the similarity of two faces and the time time choose variables. In any given situation, participates had either 2 seconds to choose similar faces, 2 seconds to choose dissimilar faces, 5 seconds to choose similar or dissimilar faces, and unlimited time to choose similar or dissimilar faces.

In the figure below, adjust the bars to fit your predictions about how often people would notice the picture switch. Higher bars mean people more often noticed that the cards had been switched. Lower bars mean that people made one choice and didn’t notice when they were given the wrong picture. This isn’t easy because you need to take account of the two variables: (1) amount of time looking at the pictures before your choice and (2) similarity of the faces in the pictures.

Most people make predictions that put the red bars lowest, the purple bars in the middle, and the green bars highest. This supports the idea that the more time you have to look at the pictures, the more likely you are to notice that the picture you have chosen is not the one the experimenter gave you.

People also expect that the switch will be more noticeable if the faces are dissimilar. For example, if we look at the green bars with unlimited time, it makes sense that people will generally notice when the faces have been switched on them, and this is much greater when the two faces are very different (dissimilar condition) than when they are similar (similar condition).

Typical responses showing what people will think about how many will notice that the pictures are switched. When given 2 seconds, maybe 18% will notice which similar faces are shown, but 20% would notice dissimilar faces. Given five seconds, 40% would identify switched similar faces and 50% switched dissimilar faces. With unlimited time, 70% would notice similar faces and 90% dissimilar faces.

Most people find it hard to believe that lots of people will be tricked by the switch in faces, even if the experimenter has good magician skills. So, what did happen?

Results showing the percentage of participants who noticed the wrong face in the experiment. Given 2 seconds, 10% notice on similar faces and 11% noticed on dissimilar faces; given 5 seconds 15% noticed similar faces and 17% noticed dissimilar, and given unlimited time, 25% noticed the change in both similar and dissimilar faces.

First, people generally did not notice the change in faces. Overall, participants on fewer than 20% of the trials noticed any of the card switches. Most participants simply did not realize that the faces had been switched, and many were either very surprised when they were told what had happened or they simply didn’t believe the experimenters.

There was an effect of time. The red bars (2 seconds to choose) are lower than the purple bars (5 seconds to choose), and the purple bars are lower than the green bars (unlimited time to choose), but the differences are fairly modest. The bigger surprise was the LACK of difference between the similar and dissimilar faces. In all three time conditions, there was no significant difference—barely a measurable difference–between the similar and dissimilar faces conditions. [3]

What Do These Results Tell Us?

With just these results, we are still a long way from understanding choice blindness. The experiment you just read takes us a couple of steps in the right direction. First, the similarity of the faces is (surprisingly) not a particularly influential factor. This does not mean that the case is closed and similarity is unimportant, but it does suggest that confusion due to similarity may not be the whole story.

The amount of time participants had to choose did have a big influence on detection of a switch in faces. When the participants were rushed (2 second condition), the chance of detecting a change was very slight. Given 5 seconds, detection improved, but not by a great amount. Unlimited time to choose made a substantial difference, but detection was still only around 25%. These results suggest that time to choose may be an important factor, but it is not the whole story. Furthermore, we are still not sure what it was about the extra time that led to improved detection. Did more time allow the participants to remember the faces better? Or perhaps their memory for faces was not improved, but they had more time to think of reasons they preferred one person over the other (her earrings, the way her hair flowed, a look in her eyes). These preferred features could signal to them that something was missing when the wrong picture was presented.

If you explore the research literature on choice blindness, you will find that the phenomenon has been studied from many angles. Experiments have been conducted in university laboratories and on the streets of a city in the Netherlands. Choice blindness in the video involved remembering what someone looked like, but choices involving sound, taste, and smell have also produced choice blindness. Even people’s judgments about their own personality and preferences is open to choice blindness. We don’t fully understand when and why choice blindness occurs, but it is an intriguing phenomenon, open to scientific curiosity.

A Final Thought

In a TED talk from 2016, Petter Johannson describes choice blindness to an audience. At the end he acknowledges that choice blindness can make people look silly or worse, but he also believes that this research provides us with an insight about people that may be reason for hope in a world seemingly full of discord and bereft of compromise.

Here are the closing lines from his TED talk:

This [choice blindness] may all seem a bit disturbing. But if you want to look at it from a positive direction, it could be seen as showing: Okay, so we’re all a little bit more flexible than we think. We can change our minds. Our attitudes are not set in stone. And we can also change the minds of others if we can only get them to engage with the issue and see it from the opposite view. … Getting rid of the need to stay consistent is actually a huge relief and makes [social] life so much easier to live. So the conclusion must be, “Know that you don’t know yourself. Or at least not as well as you think you do.”

CC licensed content, Original

Psychology in Real Life: Choice Blindness. Authored by : Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

CC licensed content, Shared previously

Actors Headshots . Authored by : Vanity Studios. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/149481436@N03/34277183806/in/photostream/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
Image of man. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
man with beard. Authored by : Simon Robben. Provided by : Pexels. Located at : https://www.pexels.com/photo/face-facial-hair-fine-looking-guy-614810/ . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
image of businessman. Authored by : RoyalAnwar. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/model-businessman-corporate-2911332/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
man in black shirt. Authored by : songjayjay. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/face-men-s-asia-shirts-blacj-young-1391628/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
woman headshot. Authored by : Richard Ha. Provided by : Flickr. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q . License : CC BY: Attribution
businesswoman headshot. Authored by : Richard Rives. Provided by : Flickr. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/richpat2/38251159285/in/photostream/ . License : CC BY: Attribution

BBC Choice Blindness. Authored by : BBC. Provided by : ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqyw-EwgTk . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions. Provided by : ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htNx0eWmgs . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Petter Johannson, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, & Andreas Olsson. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310 (7 October 2005), 116-119. ↵
The video is a segment from a BBC video from the science series called Horizons. This particular show was about decision making ↵
The results are more complex than the figure suggests. The data shown above are limited to first detections of the switch in pictures. After people notice that there has been a switch, they tend to be a bit suspicious and they are more vigilant about noticing changes. If all trials are taken into account, the data are still similar to these, but not quite as pretty. See the original paper for all the details. ↵

Share This Book

Foundations
Write Paper

Search form

Experiments
Anthropology
Self-Esteem
Social Anxiety

Psychology >

Choice Blindness

Peter johansson's experiment, peter johansson's experiment.

Choice blindness refers to ways in which people are blind to their own choices and preferences. Lars Hall and Peter Johansson further explain this phenomenon in their study.

This article is a part of the guide:

Social Psychology Experiments
Milgram Experiment
Bobo Doll Experiment
Stanford Prison Experiment
Asch Experiment

Browse Full Outline

1 Social Psychology Experiments
2.1 Asch Figure
3 Bobo Doll Experiment
4 Good Samaritan Experiment
5 Stanford Prison Experiment
6.1 Milgram Experiment Ethics
7 Bystander Apathy
8 Sherif’s Robbers Cave
9 Social Judgment Experiment
10 Halo Effect
11 Thought-Rebound
12 Ross’ False Consensus Effect
13 Interpersonal Bargaining
14 Understanding and Belief
15 Hawthorne Effect
16 Self-Deception
17 Confirmation Bias
18 Overjustification Effect
19 Choice Blindness
20.1 Cognitive Dissonance
21.1 Social Group Prejudice
21.2 Intergroup Discrimination
21.3 Selective Group Perception

Choice Blindness is type of a broader phenomenon called the introspection illusion. Here, people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating other’s introspections as unreliable.

Let’s look at choice blindness this way. We think we want A but when we are given B, we make up all kinds of reasons that would persuade us into believing that B is a much better alternative and how we actually wanted it all along.

Lars Hall and Peter Johansson further explain choice blindness in their study.

Statement of the Problem

Peter Johansson together with his colleagues collectively investigated subjects’ insight into their own preferences using a new technique.

The researchers’ aim was to measure whether participants notice that something went wrong with their choice, during and after the experimental task.

Methodology

The experimenters presented subjects two photos of female faces and were asked which they found more attractive.

They were given a closer look at their "chosen" photograph and asked to verbally explain their choice immediately.

The trial was repeated 15 times for watch volunteer, using different pairs of faces but in three of the trials, unknown to the subjects, a card magic trick was used to extremely exchange one face for the other after a decision has been made. The subjects end up with the face they did not actually choose. And they were again, asked to explain why made them choose that particular face, even though it wasn’t really their first choice.

Majority of the participants failed to actually notice that the picture they were looking at wasn’t their original choice. Many subjects confabulated explanations of their choice.

For example, the subject may say:

I preferred this one because I prefer blondes.

when he in fact his original choice was the brunette, but he was handed a blonde. These must have been confabulated because they explain a preference that they did not really make to begin with.

Common sense would tell that all of us would of course notice such a big change in the outcome of a choice. But results showed that in 75% of the trials, the participants were blind to the mismatch. What’s more interesting is that, not only were a large number of participants were clueless of the switch, when allowed to take a longer look at their choice, they were able to make up a detailed explanation for why they chose that face when originally, they actually rejected it. The experimenters coined the term choice blindness for this failure to detect a mismatch.

A few, less than 1/10 of the manipulations were easily spotted by the participants. Not more than 20% of all manipulations were actually exposed, towards the end of each experiment.

After the experiment, the participants were presented a hypothetical scenario:

Suppose you were involved in an experiment where the faces you chose were switched. Would you notice?

84% of the participants said in the post-test interview that they would. Researchers called this choice blindness. When the truth was revealed to some, they expressed surprise and even disbelief.

Johansson further explains that when individuals were asked to reason out their choices, they remained confident in their verbal reports and had the same state of emotionality and expressed the same level of detail for faces they have and have not chosen.

Another important finding is that the effects of choice blindness go beyond snap judgements. Depending on what the participants say in response to the mismatched outcomes of choices (whether they give short or long explanations, give numerical rating or labelling, and so on), it was found that this interaction could change their future preferences to the extent that they come to prefer the previously rejected alternative. This gave the researchers a rare glimpse into the complicated dynamics of self-feedback ("I chose this, I publicly said so, therefore I must like it"), which is suspect as to what lies behind the formation of many everyday preferences.

The researchers did not know how or why choice blindness occur but they think it gets to the very heart of how we make decisions in our everyday life. According to Hall, one of the researchers, choice blindness doesn’t always happen. Therefore the concept of intention needs to be re-evaluated and investigated more closely.

There are several theories about decision-making that assume that we recognize when our intentions and the outcome of our choices do not match up but Johansson’s study shows that this assumption is not always the case. His experiment challenges both current theories of decision-making and common sense notions of choice and self-knowledge.

Application

Experiments on choice blindness can be used to provide a way to study subjectivity and introspection, topics once considered by scientists to be extremely difficult or even impossible to measure or evaluate scientifically.

Why does this happen? According to Jonah Lehrer, these confabulations are sometimes necessary half-truths that preserve the unity of oneself. Lehrer further explains: “just as a novelist creates a narrative, we create a sense of being. The self, in this sense, is our work of art, a fiction created by the mind in order to make sense of its own fragments.”

Introspection Illusion

‘Choice Blindness’ and How We Fool Ourselves

Confabulations by Jonah Lehrer

Psychology 101
Flags and Countries
Capitals and Countries

Explorable.com (Mar 20, 2010). Choice Blindness. Retrieved Jan 27, 2025 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/choice-blindness

You Are Allowed To Copy The Text

The text in this article is licensed under the Creative Commons-License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) .

This means you're free to copy, share and adapt any parts (or all) of the text in the article, as long as you give appropriate credit and provide a link/reference to this page.

That is it. You don't need our permission to copy the article; just include a link/reference back to this page. You can use it freely (with some kind of link), and we're also okay with people reprinting in publications like books, blogs, newsletters, course-material, papers, wikipedia and presentations (with clear attribution).

Want to stay up to date? Follow us!

Save this course for later.

Don't have time for it all now? No problem, save it as a course and come back to it later.

Footer bottom

Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter

Thinking and Intelligence

Psych in real life: choice blindness, learning objectives.

Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving, including choice blindness

Choice Blindness

The Attraction Preference Experiment

You can learn the basics of the experiment conducted by Petter Johannson, Lars Hall and their colleagues by watching the following video [2] .

Except that this didn’t always happen this way. Using a magician’s trick, on some trials, when the experimenter handed you the card, he actually handed you the card you did NOT choose.

You can view the transcript for “BBC Choice Blindness” here (opens in new window) .

But is it Real? The Value of Replication

There are at least three different types of replication.

Direct Replication : Conduct exactly the same study again, usually with new participants from the same population as the original study. A successful replication would produce results similar to those in the original study.
Systematic Replication : Conduct a study that is similar to the original one, but using slightly different methods or stimuli.
Conceptual Replication : Conduct a very different study that still tests the original idea. In the current context, a conceptual replication would test the choice blindness idea using a method that did not involve choosing attractive people.

So, can you believe the choice blindness phenomenon?

Here is video showing another study by Johannson and Hall. The video has no sound—only subtitles.

You can view the transcript for “Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions” here (opens in new window) .

Link to Learning

Visit this link to watch another video related about conceptual replication , this time related to taste.

From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration

What you saw in the video is what a scientist would call a phenomenon—that is, a behavior that happens under certain conditions. The video showed that, if an experimenter is tricky enough, they can get people to justify choices that they never made. If you find this phenomenon interesting, then it may be worth your time to try to find out why it happens. (If you didn’t think it was interesting, then you will probably move on to find something that inspires you.)

Two Variables: Time and Similarity

Figure 1 . Johansson and Hall wanted to know if people were more likely to notice a similar or dissimilar image when shown a picture they did not chose.

If we put the two manipulated variables (time and similarity) together, that gives us six conditions:

Six conditions with variance in two categories: Similarity of two faces, and time to choose. The six conditions are as follows: 2 seconds to choose similar faces, 2 seconds to choose dissimilar faces, 5 seconds to choose similar faces, 5 seconds to choose dissimilar faces, unlimited time to choose similar faces, unlimited time to choose dissimilar faces.

Figure 2 . The six conditions of the experiment show that people were shown either similar or dissimilar faces, or given various amounts of time.

Most people find it hard to believe that lots of people will be tricked by the switch in faces, even if the experimenter has good magician skills. So, what did happen?

What Do These Results Tell Us?

A Final Thought

Petter Johannson’s 2016 TED Talk from 2016 describes choice blindness to an audience . At the end he acknowledges that choice blindness can make people look silly or worse, but he also believes that this research provides us with an insight about people that may be reason for hope in a world seemingly full of discord and bereft of compromise.

Here are the closing lines from his TED talk:

This [choice blindness] may all seem a bit disturbing. But if you want to look at it from a positive direction, it could be seen as showing: Okay, so we’re all a little bit more flexible than we think. We can change our minds. Our attitudes are not set in stone. And we can also change the minds of others if we can only get them to engage with the issue and see it from the opposite view. … Getting rid of the need to stay consistent is actually a huge relief and makes [social] life so much easier to live. So the conclusion must be, “Know that you don’t know yourself. Or at least not as well as you think you do.”

Candela Citations

Psychology in Real Life: Choice Blindness. Authored by : Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
Actors Headshots . Authored by : Vanity Studios. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/149481436@N03/34277183806/in/photostream/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
Image of man. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
man with beard. Authored by : Simon Robben. Provided by : Pexels. Located at : https://www.pexels.com/photo/face-facial-hair-fine-looking-guy-614810/ . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
image of businessman. Authored by : RoyalAnwar. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/model-businessman-corporate-2911332/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
man in black shirt. Authored by : songjayjay. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/face-men-s-asia-shirts-blacj-young-1391628/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
woman headshot. Authored by : Richard Ha. Provided by : Flickr. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q . License : CC BY: Attribution
businesswoman headshot. Authored by : Richard Rives. Provided by : Flickr. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/richpat2/38251159285/in/photostream/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
BBC Choice Blindness. Authored by : BBC. Provided by : ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqyw-EwgTk . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions. Provided by : ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htNx0eWmgs . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Petter Johannson, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, & Andreas Olsson. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310 (7 October 2005), 116-119. ↵
The video is a segment from a BBC video from the science series called Horizons. This particular show was about decision making ↵
The results are more complex than the figure suggests. The data shown above are limited to first detections of the switch in pictures. After people notice that there has been a switch, they tend to be a bit suspicious and they are more vigilant about noticing changes. If all trials are taken into account, the data are still similar to these, but not quite as pretty. See the original paper for all the details. ↵

Bipolar Disorder
Therapy Center
When To See a Therapist
Types of Therapy
Best Online Therapy
Best Couples Therapy
Managing Stress
Sleep and Dreaming
Understanding Emotions
Self-Improvement
Healthy Relationships
Student Resources
Personality Types
Guided Meditations
Verywell Mind Insights
2024 Verywell Mind 25
Mental Health in the Classroom
Editorial Process
Meet Our Review Board
Crisis Support

Choice Blindness in Psychology

We aren't always fully aware of the choices we make

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk, "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

What the Research Says

How choice blindness influences decisions, what causes choice blindness, real-world implications.

The concept of choice blindness suggests that people are not always aware of their choices and preferences. Choice blindness is a part of a cognitive phenomenon known as the introspection illusion . Essentially, people incorrectly believe that they fully understand the roots of their emotions and thoughts, yet believe that other people's introspections are largely unreliable.

According to research on this topic, even when you don't get what you want, there's a strong chance that you won't even notice. And you may even defend a choice just because you think it's the one you made.

For example, let's say you've been asked to taste two different types of jams and choose your favorite. You are then offered another taste of the one you selected as your favorite and asked to explain why you chose it. Do you think that you would notice if the jam that you had initially rejected was presented to you as your "favorite?"

In a pioneering study on the concept of choice blindness, researchers Johansson, Hall, Sikstrom, and Olsson examined how people often overlook differences between their intentions and outcomes. The study involved having participants look at images of two different female faces for between two to five seconds. The participants then rated which face they found the most attractive.

The researchers then changed the photo that the participants thought they had chosen to that of an entirely different woman, and the participants were asked to describe why they found the woman attractive.

Surprisingly, only 13% of the participants noticed the switch. In fact, many went on to describe the reasons why they found the face attractive, even though it was not the woman that they had chosen at all.

Further research demonstrated how these effects could influence other types of choices. In 2010 social scientists Petter Johansson, Lars Hall, and their colleagues presented just such a scenario to supermarket volunteers. They found that fewer than 20% of participants noticed that they tasted the jam they had turned down just a few moments earlier. In many cases, the difference between the two flavors differed dramatically, ranging from spicy to sweet to bitter.

In other cases, people ended up tasting the exact same jam twice. Yet when asked, people would then explain how the two tastes were different.

Such findings demonstrate that people don't always understand the inner workings of their own minds and are frequently blind to the factors that influence their choices.

Researchers have demonstrated how choice blindness impacts visual, taste, and smell preferences, but is it possible that it might have an influence on more important choices?

In a 2013 study by Hall and colleagues, researchers investigated how choice blindness might influence political attitudes. During a Swedish general election, participants were asked to state who they planned to vote for and were then asked to select their opinion for each of a number of wedge issues. Then using sleight of hand, the researchers altered their replies so that they were actually on the opposing political point of view. Participants were then asked to justify their responses on the altered issues.

Consistent with earlier research on choice blindness, only 22% of the manipulated responses were detected and more than 90% of the participants accepted and then endorsed at least one altered response.

These results suggest that our political attitudes may be more open to change than we may realize.

How do the experts define choice blindness? According to Johansson and Hall, we frequently fail to notice when we are presented with something different from what we really want, and, we will come up with reasons to defend this "choice."

So why do so many people fail to notice these switches? Are we less aware of our preferences than we think we are?

Interest in the choice at hand is one factor that might play a role. When an issue is more important to us, we might be likely to notice mismatches between what we choose and what we actually get. Additionally, the similarity of choices can have an effect—we may be less likely to notice small differences when presented with a choice we did not make.

Choice blindness can have important ramifications in the real world. The ability to recognize faces plays a major role in our everyday lives. While we might think that we are good at recognizing a face that we had previously selected, the reality is that we are actually quite poor at detecting switches.

While this kind of mistake may not always be significant, there are times when it can be life-changing. For example, eyewitness testimony is one of the more common means of identifying the supposed perpetrator of a given crime, but this kind of testimony—while compelling—is far less accurate than evidence such as DNA. It could be much easier than we think for a witness—through no malice of their own—to be manipulated into positively and confidently identifying the wrong person.

The next time you're making a decision, perhaps it will help to take an extra beat to fully understand and process your choice as you make it. You may be less susceptible to mistaking that choice for something else in the future.

Johansson P, Hall L, Sikstrom S, Olsson A. Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task . Science . 2005;310(5745):116-119. doi:10.1126/science.1111709

Hall L, Johansson P, Tärning B, Sikström S, Deutgen T. Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea . Cognition. 2010;117(1): 54-61. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.06.010

Hall L, Strandberg T, Pärnamets P, Lind A, Tärning B, Johansson P. How the polls can be both spot on and dead wrong: Using choice blindness to shift political attitudes and voter intentions . PLoS ONE. 2013; 8(4) : e60554. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060554

O’Neill Shermer L, Rose KC, Hoffman A. Perceptions and credibility: Understanding the nuances of eyewitness testimony . Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice . 2011;27(2):183-203. doi:10.1177/1043986211405886

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock Locked padlock icon ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Publications
Account settings
Advanced Search
Journal List

Sad Facial Expressions Increase Choice Blindness

Zhijie zhang, wenfeng feng.

Author information
Article notes
Copyright and License information

Edited by: Mario Weick, University of Kent, United Kingdom

Reviewed by: Anna Sagana, Maastricht University, Netherlands; Mariya Kirichek, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

*Correspondence: Zhijie Zhang [email protected]

Wenfeng Feng [email protected]

This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received 2017 Aug 13; Accepted 2017 Dec 18; Collection date 2017.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Previous studies have discovered a fascinating phenomenon known as choice blindness—individuals fail to detect mismatches between the face they choose and the face replaced by the experimenter. Although previous studies have reported a couple of factors that can modulate the magnitude of choice blindness, the potential effect of facial expression on choice blindness has not yet been explored. Using faces with sad and neutral expressions (Experiment 1) and faces with happy and neutral expressions (Experiment 2) in the classic choice blindness paradigm, the present study investigated the effects of facial expressions on choice blindness. The results showed that the detection rate was significantly lower on sad faces than neutral faces, whereas no significant difference was observed between happy faces and neutral faces. The exploratory analysis of verbal reports found that participants who reported less facial features for sad (as compared to neutral) expressions also tended to show a lower detection rate of sad (as compared to neutral) faces. These findings indicated that sad facial expressions increased choice blindness, which might have resulted from inhibition of further processing of the detailed facial features by the less attractive sad expressions (as compared to neutral expressions).

Keywords: choice blindness, facial expressions, sad faces, happy faces, neutral faces

Introduction

It is commonly believed that the outcome of a choice stands for individual preference. Based on this assumption, if the outcome of our choice is replaced with another outcome, then we should easily detect this mismatch because the replaced outcome would contradict our original preference. However, is this always the case? Previous studies discovered a fascinating phenomenon known as choice blindness (CB), wherein people fail to notice a radical change to the outcome of their choice (Johansson et al., 2005 ). In a typical choice blindness experiment, a pair of female faces was presented, and participants were asked to choose the more attractive face. Later, when participants were confronted with their choice, they were asked to report the reasons for choosing it verbally (non-manipulated trials). In certain trials, participants' choices were reversed, so that they were confronted with the opposite outcome of their intended choice (manipulated trials). Surprisingly, in the majority of the manipulated trials, participants not only failed to detect the mismatches between their preferences and the outcomes but also were prepared to describe the reasons why they chose the face that they never intended to choose (Johansson et al., 2005 ). Furthermore, using various linguistic markers (certainty, specificity, emotionality, complexity, etc.), comparisons of introspective reasons that were reported verbally showed no significant difference between manipulated and non-manipulated trials (Johansson et al., 2005 , 2006 ).

Although the robust effect of CB was consistently observed in a series of later studies (Johansson et al., 2005 , 2006 ; Sagana et al., 2013 ; Sauerland et al., 2016 ; Somerville and McGowan, 2016 ), several behavioral studies have reported a couple of factors that can modulate the extent of choice blindness. For example, there was a higher detection rate (i.e., lower magnitude of choice blindness) in the free time condition compared to the fixed viewing time (e.g., 5 s of deliberation time) condition (Johansson et al., 2005 ). Besides, choice blindness was significantly increased for faces with higher similarity (Sagana et al., 2013 ). Furthermore, there was a substantial reduction in the incidence of choice blindness when participants displayed a strong overall preference for the presented stimuli (Somerville and McGowan, 2016 ). It is noteworthy that previous choice blindness studies using faces as stimuli selected only faces with neutral facial expression as stimuli. However, human faces have great biological/social importance, especially facial expressions play an important role in decision-making and social interaction (Hansen and Hansen, 1988 ; Fox et al., 2000 ; Seymour and Dolan, 2008 ; Ebner et al., 2010 ), and previous studies, to our knowledge, have not yet investigated the potential effects of facial expressions on choice blindness. Hence, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether choice blindness could be influenced by facial expressions.

As mentioned above, the task in the choice blindness paradigm was to choose which face in each pair was more attractive; in other words, participants made their choices probably based on the evaluation of facial attractiveness. Previous studies have shown that individuals appear less physically attractive when their facial expression is sad when compared with being neutral or happy (Byrne and Clore, 1970 ; Mueser et al., 1984 ; Gelstein et al., 2011 ; Morrison et al., 2013 ), which is probably because a sad facial expression is more likely to be a distressing cue, resulting in participants reacting to the sad expression with avoidance-related behaviors (Seidel et al., 2010 ). It has also been found that more attractive faces (i.e., happy or neutral faces) are recognized more easily in a recognition task (Tsukiura and Cabeza, 2008 ; Marzi and Viggiano, 2010 ). This attractiveness effect on recognition was found to be related to enhanced reward signals processed by the orbitofrontal cortex, which contributed to encoding and retrieval processing stages (Tsukiura and Cabeza, 2008 ; Marzi and Viggiano, 2010 ).

According to the previous findings, we hypothesized that the processing of facial expressions might influence the magnitude of choice blindness by modulating facial attractiveness, and higher choice blindness would be observed for a negative expression than for positive and neutral expressions. To test these hypotheses explicitly, happy, neutral, and sad female faces were used as stimuli in the present study. Using the established CB paradigm and a similar card-trick methodology (manipulation) described by Johansson et al. ( 2005 ), participants were asked to choose the more attractive face in each pair under each of the two facial expression conditions (neutral and sad expressions for subjects who participated in Experiment 1, and neutral and happy expressions for those who participated in Experiment 2). In addition, the same detection classification that was used in Johansson et al.'s study (Johansson et al., 2014 ), including concurrent and retrospective detection, was introduced to the present study.

Materials and methods

Participants.

A total of 120 students (61 females, mean age 22.3 years, SD = 3.6) participated in the study after giving written informed consent as approved by the ethical committee of the Soochow University. All participants were undergraduates. Both the experiments comprised 60 participants each. All participants were naive about the purpose of the study and reported normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Each of them received a small payment in return for their participation. All procedures for the current study were approved by the ethical committee of Soochow University.

The experiments were implemented by “E-prime” software (version 2.0) on a portable computer (Lenovo Z380) with a 13.3-inch monitor (refresh rate 60 Hz, resolution 1,366 × 768). Forty-five pairs of grayscale photographs of female faces from the Chinese Affective Picture System (CAPS, Gong et al., 2011 ) were chosen as stimuli, including 15 pairs of sad faces, 15 pairs of neutral faces, and 15 pairs of happy faces, respectively. Each photograph showed a face in roughly frontal view with the size of 370 × 556 pixels.

In Experiment 1, 15 pairs of sad faces and 15 pairs of neutral faces were presented to the participants pair by pair, separately for sad faces and neutral faces. To avoid our results being attributed to differences in the similarity of paired faces between sad and neutral expressions, an attempt was made to keep the physical similarity constant at an intermediate level. The 15 pairs of sad faces and 15 pairs of neutral faces used in Experiment 1 were rated by 35 adults for similarity on a scale from 1 to 9 (1 = not at all similar; 9 = very similar) in a pilot study. The pairs of sad faces had a mean similarity of 4.40 ( SD = 0.99; 95% CI = [4.06, 4.72]) and the pairs of neutral faces had a mean similarity of 4.62 ( SD = 0.93; 95% CI = [4.30, 4.94]). There was no significant difference in similarity between sad and neutral faces [ t (34) = 1.33, p = 0.194, d = 0.22]. Three pairs of faces in each expression were chosen as target pairs (manipulated trials), in which participants received the opposite outcome of what they intended. The target pairs were always presented at the same position (the 7th, 10th, and 14th pairs) in the sequence (Johansson et al., 2005 ). It should be noted that no significant difference was observed on the similarity between target pairs of sad faces and neutral faces [ t (34) = 1.56, p = 0.129, d = 0.26].

In Experiment 2, 15 pairs of happy faces and the same 15 pairs of neutral faces as used in Experiment 1 were presented pair by pair, separately for happy faces and neutral faces. Another 35 raters used a nine-point scale to rate the similarity of the 15 pairs of happy faces and the 15 pairs of neutral faces. The happy face pairs had a mean similarity of 4.49 ( SD = 1.15; 95% CI = [4.09, 4.89]), and the neutral face pairs had a mean similarity of 4.77 ( SD = 0.78; 95% CI = [4.50, 5.04]). No significant difference was observed on the similarity between happy and neutral faces [ t (34) = 1.30, p = 0.203, d = 0.22]. Similar to Experiment 1, three pairs of faces in each expression were manipulated, and there was no significant difference on the similarity between these target pairs of happy faces and neutral faces [ t (34) = 1.26, p = 0.216, d = 0.21].

In Experiment 1, there were two experimental phases. In the first phase, 15 trials of sad faces were presented in one block, and 15 trials of neutral faces were presented in another block. Each block consisted of three manipulated trials (M trials) and 12 non-manipulated trials (NM trials). The manipulated trials were presented at the position of the 7th, 10th, and 14th in the trial sequence for both the blocks.

In each trial, participants were asked to decide the more attractive face in each pair by pressing “F” or “J” on the keyboard. Button F represented “choosing the left face,” and button J represented “choosing the right.” Each pair was presented on the screen for 4 s, and then it disappeared. Participants were instructed to choose the face that they found more attractive as soon as the photographs disappeared. The 4-s presentation of each face pair was chosen because previous studies had shown that this duration was sufficient for participants to form a preference for face pairs (Johansson et al., 2005 ; Willis and Todorov, 2010 ). Following the response, the exact outcome of the choice in non-manipulated trials was presented, and the subjects were asked to describe the reasons (any reason was fine) in oral form for their choices in Chinese. The reasons that participants delivered in each trial were recorded by the experimenter as “verbal reports.” For manipulated trials, however, participants would receive the opposite outcome of their choice after their response. If participants immediately detected that their choice outcome was reversed, this detection of M trial was recorded and classified as a “concurrent detection,” and they were asked to describe the reasons for this detection (verbal reports). If participants did not detect the ongoing M trial, they were also asked to deliver verbal reports for their choices (the same as in non-manipulated trials) when seeing the manipulated outcome.

As described above, the 15 trials of sad faces were presented to participants in one block, and the 15 trials of neutral faces were presented in another block. The reason for assigning sad faces and neutral faces into two separate blocks was that randomizing sad face pairs and neutral face pairs in one block might weaken the perceived difference in facial expression between sad and neutral faces and thus decrease the effect of facial expression (e.g., if sad faces were presented in the previous trial and neutral faces were presented in the current trial, then chances were that the perceived sad expression in the previous trial might lead to a tendency toward perceiving current neutral faces as sad expressions to some degree). To balance the possible effect of the block order (i.e., successfully detecting the manipulated trial(s) in the former block might lead to higher detection rate in the latter block, as participants might be aware of the manipulated trials in the former block and then pay more attention to differences between the two faces in the latter block), the order of the two blocks were counterbalanced across participants. The 15 pairs of sad faces were presented in the first block to half of the participants, and the 15 pairs of neutral faces were presented in the first block to the other half of the participants. In addition, an interference task was also introduced between blocks to minimize the possible effect of block order, in which the participants were asked to do a simple numerical addition and subtraction task for 5 min.

After the completion of the first phase (i.e., two blocks), the second experimental phase was an interview in which the participants were asked a series of questions ( Appendix ) about the experiment in the first phase. These questions aimed at determining whether participants had realized the manipulation but did not report it. If the participants declared that there was something strange with the face pairs, they were then asked to look through all face pairs again and to pick out the face pair(s) they thought had been manipulated. If they successfully picked out a manipulated face pair that had not been reported concurrently in the first phase, this detection would be recorded and classified as a “retrospective detection.”

The dependent variable in the present study was the percentage of detected manipulated trials (see the Data analysis section for details). In Experiment 1, the independent variables were block order (between-subject factor: sad-face first vs. neutral-face first) and facial expression (within-subject factor: sad faces vs. neutral faces). In Experiment 2, block order (between-subject factor: happy-face first vs. neutral-face first) and facial expression (within-subject factor: happy faces vs. neutral faces) served as the independent variables.

Data analysis

To investigate the effect of facial expressions on choice blindness for each participant, the detection rate of manipulated trials was separately calculated for neutral faces and sad faces in Experiment 1 and for neutral faces and happy faces in Experiment 2. The detection rate was calculated as the percentage of detected M trials, including concurrent detection (participants detected immediately after the originally chosen image was replaced) and retrospective detection (participants described they had experienced something strange and picked out the manipulation during the interview phase). The detection rate was subject to a two-way ANOVA with the factors of facial expression (neutral faces vs. sad/happy faces) and block order (neutral faces first vs. expressional faces first), separately, for Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. The potential effect of the block order was included in the statistical analysis to examine whether the facial expression effect (if there were any) would be accounted for by the block order [i.e., the effectiveness of the between-block interference task on minimizing the order effect (see the Procedure section for details)].

To investigate the reasons for the possible effects of facial expressions on choice blindness, an exploratory analysis was performed on the “verbal reports.” This analysis was exploratory and was not planned because we did not find any expectation regarding the verbal reports from previous studies (Johansson et al., 2005 , 2006 ). For each participant and each facial expression condition, the verbal reports on the M trials were collected, and the keywords mentioned in these verbal reports were classified into four dimensions. Three dimensions from previous studies were introduced into our study, such as uncertainty, emotionality, and specificity (Johansson et al., 2005 , 2006 ). In addition, considering that Asians were more likely than Westerners to process the faces globally (Miyamoto et al., 2011 ), personality was employed as the fourth dimension. It referred to instances when participants described faces holistically, such as “friendly,” “self-confident,” and “strict.” Therefore, the verbal reports involved in the present study were categorized into four dimensions, such as uncertainty, emotionality, specificity, and personality. Uncertainty was defined as the frequency of words expressing hesitation and uncertainty in participants' reports. The following words and phrases were considered as the aspect of uncertainty: “probably,” “perhaps,” “I suppose,” and “do not know.” Emotionality was identified as the frequency of words expressing positive and negative emotions. Positive and negative adjectives were included in the aspect of emotionality, such as “happy,” “sad,” and “boring.” Specificity was defined as the frequency of words on facial features reported by the participants, such as “the eyes,” “the eyebrows,” and “the nose.” Personality was defined as the frequency of adjectives that was used to describe faces holistically in participants' reports, for instance, “optimistic,” “easy-going,” and “solemn.” An author and a blind coder carried out all classifications and word-frequency statistics on M trials independently. The inter-coder reliability between the author and the coder was calculated for each of the participant's verbal reports using Holsti's method (Holsti, 1969 ; Lombard et al., 2002 ). For Experiment 1, the mean inter-coder reliability on neutral faces was 0.941 ( SE = 0.016, 95% CI = [0.911, 0.971]) and the mean inter-coder reliability on sad faces was 0.937 ( SE = 0.017, 95% CI = [0.904, 0.969]). For Experiment 2, the mean inter-coder reliability on neutral faces was 0.930 ( SE = 0.016, 95% CI = [0.899, 0.961]) and the mean inter-coder reliability on happy faces was 0.958 ( SE = 0.010, 95% CI = [0.937, 0.978]). In view of the high inter-coder reliability on each facial expression condition for both experiments, the classification results from the author were used for further analysis.

For Experiment 1, to examine the differences in verbal reports between facial expressions on M trials, the word frequency in each of the four dimensions was first compared between neutral and sad facial expressions using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. After finding a significant word-frequency difference on certain dimensions, the word-frequency difference value on this dimension (i.e., neutral-minus-sad difference) and detection rate difference value (i.e., neutral-minus-sad difference) were calculated for each participant. The resulting variables were then subject to a correlation analysis using Spearman rank correlation to explore whether the observed higher choice blindness on sad (as compared to neutral) facial expressions would be reflected by the word-frequency differences in the verbal reports on M trials.

For the purposes of comparison, verbal reports on M trials in Experiment 2 (neutral faces vs. happy faces) were also analyzed using the same methods described above.

Experiment 1: larger choice blindness was found for sad faces than neutral faces

Detection rate.

In Experiment 1, 15 trials of neutral face pairs were presented to 60 participants in one block, and 15 trials of sad face pairs were presented in another block (block order was counterbalanced across participants). Each block consisted of three manipulated trials (M trials) and 12 non-manipulated trials (NM trials). The number of participants who detected 0, 1, 2, and 3 M trials (summation of concurrent detection and retrospective detection) on the neutral facial expression condition and on the sad facial expression condition are summarized in Table 1 .

The number of participants who detected 0, 1, 2, and 3 manipulated trials (summation of concurrent detection and retrospective detection) on neutral and sad facial expression conditions.

On an average, the mean detection rate of M trials [the percentage of detected M trials including both concurrent detection and retrospective detection (see the Data analysis section)] on the neutral facial expression condition was 34.44% ( SE = 4.86%, 95% CI = [24.72%, 44.17%]), which was in agreement with previous observations (e.g., Johansson et al., 2005 ; Sagana et al., 2014 ). In contrast, the group mean detection rate on the sad facial expression condition was only 17.78% ( SE = 3.23%, 95% CI = [11.31%, 24.24%]). The 2 (facial expression: neutral faces vs. sad faces) × 2 (block order: neutral-face first vs. sad-face first) ANOVA for detection rate (see the Data analysis section for details) revealed a highly significant main effect of facial expression [ F (1, 58) = 11.61, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.17], with a lower detection rate on sad faces than neutral faces, suggesting larger choice blindness was found for sad facial expressions than for neutral facial expressions. The main effect of block order was not significant [ F (1, 58) = 0.25, p = 0.618, η p 2 = 0.004] (sad-face first group: 24.44 ± 4.70% (mean ± SE), 95% CI = [15.04%, 33.84%]; neutral-face first group: 27.78 ± 4.70%, 95% CI = [18.38%, 37.18%]). The facial expression × block order interaction was not significant [ F (1, 58) = 0.05, p = 0.821, η p 2 = 0.001], indicating that the observed facial expression effect on choice blindness could not be accounted for by block order (Figure 1A ).

Experiment 1: mean detection rate of M trials as functions of facial expression (within-subject factor: neutral faces vs. sad faces) and block order (between-subject factor: sad-face first group vs. neutral-face first group) for overall detection ( A , including both concurrent and retrospective detection) and concurrent detection only (B) . Note that significant lower detection rate (i.e., larger choice blindness) was found for sad than neutral facial expressions. Error bars in both graphs indicate ± 1 SE.

For the purposes of comparison, the concurrent detection rate (the percentage of immediately detected M trials only) was also subject to the two-way ANOVA mentioned above. As expected, the concurrent detection rate was also found to be significantly lower for sad facial expressions (15.56 ± 3.11% (mean ± SE), 95% CI = [9.33%, 21.78%]) than for neutral (27.78 ± 4.46%, 95% CI = [18.85%, 36.70%]) facial expressions [ F (1, 58) = 7.84, p < 0.01, η p 2 = 0.12]. Once again, neither the main effect of the block order [ F (1, 58) = 0.49, p = 0.486, η p 2 = 0.008] (sad-face first group: 19.44 ± 4.48%, 95% CI = [10.48%, 28.40%]; neutral-face first group: 23.89 ± 4.48%, 95% CI = [14.93%, 32.85%]) nor the facial expression × block order interaction [ F (1, 58) = 0.26, p = 0.613, η p 2 = 0.004] was significant (Figure 1B ).

Verbal reports

To explore the reasons for the finding that higher choice blindness (i.e., lower detection rate on M trials) was observed on sad facial expressions than neutral facial expressions, an exploratory analysis was performed to explore whether the observed facial expression effect on choice blindness would be reflected by the differences in verbal reports (i.e., the reasons for choice or detection) on M trials. The verbal reports on the M trials were collected, and the keywords mentioned in these verbal reports were classified into four dimensions, namely personality, specificity, emotionality, and uncertainty (see the Data analysis section for details). The word frequency in each of the four dimensions was first compared between neutral and sad facial expressions using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The results (see Table 2 ) revealed that, compared to the neutral condition, word frequency mentioned on the emotionality dimension was significantly higher in the sad faces condition, which made sense if sad facial expressions evoke higher emotional arousal than neutral expressions. In contrast, word frequency on specificity was significantly lower in the sad condition than the neutral condition, suggesting that participants overall described less detailed facial features when seeing faces with sad expressions than when seeing them with neutral expressions.

Comparisons ( n = 60) of word frequency on each dimension of verbal reports on M trials between neutral and sad facial expressions.

Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to conduct these comparisons .

The difference values of the word frequency (i.e., neutral-minus-sad difference) on emotionality and specificity dimensions and the difference values of the detection rate (i.e., neutral-minus-sad difference) were then subject to a correlation analysis using the Spearman rank correlation to further explore whether the observed higher choice blindness on sad (as compared to neutral) facial expressions would be related to the word-frequency differences on these dimensions of the verbal reports on M trials. Interestingly, no significant correlation was found between the difference of word frequency on emotionality and the difference of detection rate ( r ρ = 0.046, p = 0.727), but a significant correlation was found between the difference of word frequency on specificity and the difference of detection rate ( r ρ = 0.335, p = 0.009). These results indicated that participants who reported less facial features on sad (as compared to neutral) facial expressions also tended to detect less M trials (i.e., showed higher choice blindness) on sad (as compared to neutral) facial expressions.

Experiment 2: moderate choice blindness was found for happy and neutral faces

The procedure of Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 with the following exception: 15 trials of neutral face pairs (the same 15 pairs of neutral faces that were used in Experiment 1) and 15 trials of happy face pairs were presented to another 60 participants. The number of participants who detected 0, 1, 2, and 3 manipulated trials (summation of concurrent detection and retrospective detection) on the neutral facial expression condition and that on the happy facial expression condition are summarized in Table 3 .

The number of participants who detected 0, 1, 2, and 3 manipulated trials (summation of concurrent detection and retrospective detection) on neutral and happy facial expressions.

On an average, the mean detection rate of M trials (including both concurrent detection and retrospective detection) on the neutral facial expression condition in Experiment 2 was 31.67% ( SE = 4.81%, 95% CI = [22.04%, 41.29%]), which was consistent with the observation in Experiment 1. The group mean detection rate on the happy facial expression condition was 27.22% ( SE = 4.38%, 95% CI = [18.45%, 35.99%]), which appeared to be comparable to that of the neutral condition. Indeed, the 2 (facial expression: neutral faces vs. happy faces) × 2 (block order: neutral-face first vs. happy-face first) ANOVA for detection rate showed a non-significant main effect of facial expression [ F (1, 58) = 0.77, p = 0.384, η p 2 = 0.01], suggesting that the magnitude of choice blindness on happy facial expressions and on neutral facial expressions did not differ significantly. The main effect of block order was not significant [ F (1, 58) = 0.02, p = 0.885, η p 2 = 0.0004] (happy-face first group: 28.89 ± 5.43% (mean ± SE), 95% CI = [18.02%, 39.76%]; neutral-face first group: 30.00 ± 5.43%, 95% CI = [19.13%, 40.87%]). The facial expression × block order interaction was not significant either [ F (1, 58) = 1.73, p = 0.194, η p 2 = 0.03] (Figure 2A ).

Experiment 2: mean detection rate of M trials as functions of facial expression (neutral faces vs. happy faces) and block order (happy-face first vs. neutral-face first) for overall detection (A) and concurrent detection (B) . Note that no significant difference in detection rate was found between neutral and happy facial expressions. Error bars in both graphs indicate ± 1 SE.

Similar to Experiment 1, the concurrent detection rate (the percentage of immediately detected M trials) in Experiment 2 was also subject to the two-way ANOVA mentioned above. The results showed that the main effect of facial expression was also non-significant [ F (1, 58) = 0.77, p = 0.383, η p 2 = 0.01] (neutral faces: 26.67 ± 4.20% (mean ± SE), 95% CI = [18.25%, 35.08%]; happy faces: 22.78 ± 3.90%, 95% CI = [14.97%, 30.58%]). Neither the main effect of block order [ F (1, 58) = 0.17, p = 0.684, η p 2 = 0.003] (happy-face first group: 23.33 ± 4.80%, 95% CI = [13.72%, 32.95%]; neutral-face first group: 26.11 ± 4.81%, 95% CI = [16.49%, 35.73%]) nor the facial expression × block order interaction [ F (1, 58) = 2.66, p = 0.108, η p 2 = 0.04] was significant (Figure 2B ).

Although the main finding in Experiment 2 was that the magnitude of choice blindness did not differ significantly between neutral and happy facial expressions, for purposes of comparison, verbal reports on the M trials in Experiment 2 were also analyzed with the same methods as used for Experiment 1 (see above). As shown in Table 4 , a significant difference in word frequency between neutral and happy facial expressions was only found in the emotionality dimension, with more frequent emotion-related words reported in the happy than the neutral condition. This provided further evidence for the validity of the face stimuli presented in the present study. The correlation analysis revealed no significant correlation between the difference of word frequency (i.e., neutral-minus-happy difference) on emotionality and the difference of detection rate (i.e., neutral-minus-happy difference) ( r ρ = 0.001, p = 0.994), which was analogous to the pattern observed in Experiment 1. In contrast with Experiment 1, the correlation between word-frequency difference on specificity and detection rate difference was also not significant ( r ρ = 0.166, p = 0.206).

Comparison ( n = 60) of word frequency in each dimension of verbal reports on M trials between neutral and happy facial expressions.

Follow-up analysis: sad faces were less attractive than happy and neutral faces

Since previous studies have shown that individuals appear less physically attractive when their facial expression is sad compared with when they are neutral or happy (Byrne and Clore, 1970 ; Mueser et al., 1984 ; Gelstein et al., 2011 ; Morrison et al., 2013 ), we tested whether faces with sad expressions used in our experiments were also perceived as less attractive than happy and neutral expressions. Face stimuli were rated by another 30 subjects for facial attractiveness on a nine-point scale (1 = very unattractive; 9 = very attractive). The faces with happy expressions had a mean attractiveness of 4.62 ( SD = 1.20; 95% CI = [4.17, 5.07]), the faces with neutral expressions had a mean attractiveness of 4.25 ( SD = 1.05; 95% CI = [3.86, 4.64]), and the faces with sad expressions had a mean attractiveness of 2.25 ( SD = 1.10; 95% CI = [1.84, 2.66]). The evaluation of facial attractiveness was subject to a one-way repeated measure ANOVA with facial expressions as the repeated measure with three levels. The result showed that the main effect of facial expression was highly significant [ F (2, 58) = 73.52, p < 0.0001, η p 2 = 0.717]. The post-hoc analysis, using the Bonferroni procedure, revealed that both happy and neutral facial expressions were judged as substantially more attractive than sad faces (both p s < 0.0001), whereas there was no significant difference in attractiveness between happy and neutral faces ( p = 0.070).

Most importantly, the three target pairs of happy faces (i.e., M trials on happy expression condition) had a mean attractiveness of 4.57 ( SD = 1.44; 95% CI = [4.03, 5.10]), the three target pairs of neutral faces had a mean attractiveness of 4.60 ( SD = 1.07; 95% CI = [4.20, 5.00]), and the three target pairs of sad faces had a mean attractiveness of 2.18 ( SD = 1.16; 95% CI = [1.74, 2.61]). A similar ANOVA for the evaluation of facial attractiveness on M trials also revealed a highly significant main effect of facial expression [ F (2, 58) = 59.21, p < 0.0001, η p 2 = 0.671]. The post-hoc analysis again showed that both the target pairs of happy and neutral faces were perceived as more attractive than the sad faces (both p s < 0.0001), and no significant difference was observed between target pairs of happy and neutral faces ( p = 0.988). These results indicate that sad faces were perceived as less attractive than happy and neutral faces in the current study.

Previous choice blindness studies have found a couple of factors that influenced the magnitude of choice blindness, such as similarity (Sagana et al., 2013 ), preference strength (Somerville and McGowan, 2016 ), and presentation time (Johansson et al., 2005 ). Notably, only faces with neutral facial expressions were used as stimuli to explore contributory factors in the abovementioned studies, and previous studies, to our knowledge, have not yet investigated the potential effect of facial expressions on choice blindness. Here, we explored whether the CB effect would also be affected by facial expressions. Using sad, neutral, and happy faces, the current study investigated this issue in a typical choice blindness paradigm. The results revealed that, on average, nearly a third of M trials were detected on neutral facial expression, which was in line with previous studies (Johansson et al., 2005 ; Sagana et al., 2014 ). More importantly, a lower detection rate of M trials (i.e., larger CB) was observed on sad expressions than on neutral expressions (Experiment 1), whereas the mean detection rate did not differ significantly between happy expressions and neutral expressions (Experiment 2). These results indicated that choice blindness can be affected by facial expression, but the facial expression effect occurred only for sad (but not happy) expressions.

The participants' task in the current study was to choose which face in each pair was more attractive and then report the reasons for their choices. In other words, the choice that participants made on each trial was probably based on their evaluation of facial attractiveness. On one hand, many previous studies have shown that individuals appear less physically attractive when their facial expression is sad compared with neutral or happy expressions (Byrne and Clore, 1970 ; Mueser et al., 1984 ; Gelstein et al., 2011 ; Morrison et al., 2013 ). Happy and neutral facial expressions were perceived to be more attractive expressions probably because these “safe” expressions (i.e., pleasure and neutral) were more likely to signal a desire to approach, cooperate, and interact socially with participants (Rhodes, 2006 ; Morrison et al., 2013 ). In contrast, sad facial expressions were more likely to be a distressing cue, which resulted in participants keeping their distance away from the sad expression and reacting with avoidance-related behaviors (Seidel et al., 2010 ). On the other hand, it has also been found that more attractive faces (i.e., happy or neutral faces) are recognized more easily in a recognition task (Marzi and Viggiano, 2010 ). This attractiveness effect on recognition was found to be related to enhanced reward signals processed by the orbitofrontal cortex, which contributed to both the encoding and retrieval processing stages (Tsukiura and Cabeza, 2008 ; Marzi and Viggiano, 2010 ).

Taking these previous findings together, it is reasonable to infer that both happy and neutral faces presented in the current study might be subjectively more attractive (as compared to sad faces) for participants, which, in turn, might make them relatively more willing to process the facial features on both happy and neutral faces. Therefore, an intermediate magnitude of choice blindness was found for both happy and neutral expressions, and no significant difference in choice blindness was observed between them. In contrast, sad faces in the present study might be perceived as a less attractive facial expression, which might make participants relatively less willing to further process and encode the facial feature information on sad faces. Hence, a substantially larger choice blindness was observed for sad expressions.

The above-mentioned inference, on the one hand, was further supported by our follow-up analysis of facial attractiveness, as happy and neutral expressions were indeed perceived as more attractive expressions than sad faces in the current study (see the Results section for details). On the other hand, this inference was also supported by the exploratory analysis of the verbal reports on the M trials. Specifically, in Experiment 1, the word frequency reported on the specificity dimension was found to be significantly lower for sad faces than neutral faces, and a significant correlation was found between the differences in word frequency (i.e., neutral-minus-sad difference) on specificity and the differences in detection rate (neutral-minus-sad difference). That is, participants who reported fewer facial features on sad (as compared to neutral) faces also tended to detect fewer M trials (i.e., show larger choice blindness) on sad (as compared to neutral) facial expression. These results of the verbal reports in Experiment 1, along with the results of the attractiveness analysis that sad expressions were indeed perceived as less attractive, are consistent with the above proposal that the less attractive sad expression might inhibit participants from further processing and encoding the detailed facial features on sad faces and thereby lead to a substantially larger choice blindness.

In addition, an analysis of the verbal reports in Experiment 2 revealed that no significant difference was found in word frequency on the specificity dimension between happy and neutral faces, and no significant correlation was observed between the difference in word frequency (i.e., neutral-minus-happy) on specificity and the difference in detection rate (neutral-minus-happy). These results of the verbal reports in Experiment 2, along with the results of the attractiveness analysis that there was no significant difference in attractiveness between happy and neutral faces, indicated that there was no significant difference in choice blindness between happy and neutral faces, which appeared to result from happy faces being perceived as attractive as neutral faces, which leads to detailed facial features on happy faces being processed as comparably as that on neutral faces. It should be noted that although more processing of detailed facial features may not be necessarily synonymous with better recognition memory, encoding detailed facial features would become particularly important when detecting changes between two faces with the same facial expression and intermediate similarity in the present study.

One possible contamination to our findings would be that the observed facial expression effect on choice blindness might have simply resulted from the difference in the similarity of the paired faces between sad and neutral expressions. Previous studies showed that choice blindness was significantly increased for faces with high similarity (Sagana et al., 2013 ), and the effect of similarity was also observed on choice blindness for other modalities, such as taste and smell (Hall et al., 2010 ). However, the physical similarity of paired faces for each facial expression condition was kept constant at an intermediate level (i.e., 4~5 point on a nine-point scale) in the current study. More importantly, no difference in similarity was found between sad and neutral expressions in the current study (see the Stimuli section for details). Therefore, the results found in the current study may not be due to the similarity effect on choice blindness.

Another possible contamination to our findings would be that the lower detection rate of the sad expression than the neutral expression was driven, at least partially, by the order effect, as sad face pairs and neutral face pairs were assigned into two distinct blocks. However, this was also unlikely to be the case because the potential effect of block order had been controlled in the present study by counterbalancing block order across participants and by introducing an interference task between the two blocks to minimize the effect of block order. More importantly, our results of non-significant facial expression × block order interaction on detection rate (see Results section for details) demonstrated that the observed facial expression effect could not be accounted for by block order, and the between-block interference task is valid on attenuating the order effect.

In addition, one might argue that the 4-s presentation of each facial pair used in the present study was not sufficient for participants to process the presented faces and choose one that they found more attractive. However, previous studies have shown that people are remarkably fast at forming opinions about facial appearance (Todorov et al., 2005 ) and are able to evaluate facial attractiveness after as short of an exposure as 100 ms (Willis and Todorov, 2010 ). It is also worth mentioning that Johansson et al. ( 2005 ) have already shown that even a 2-s presentation time in the choice blindness paradigm is sufficient for a great majority of participants to form a preference for face pairs. Hence, the 4-s presentation time used in the present study is substantially enough for participants to process the presented faces and form an opinion about aesthetic preference.

In summary, the current study explored whether CB would be affected by facial expressions and found that a lower detection rate of M trials (larger CB) was observed for sad expressions than neutral expressions (Experiment 1), whereas the mean detection rate did not differ significantly between happy expressions and neutral expressions (Experiment 2). The exploratory analysis of the verbal reports showed that participants who reported fewer facial features on sad (as compared to neutral) expressions also tended to detect fewer M trials on sad (as compared to neutral) facial expression conditions. We believe that the present results provide insight for understanding choice blindness, with the major findings being that a higher choice blindness was observed on sad trials, which might be due to the processing inhibition of detailed facial features by the less attractive sad expressions as compared to the neutral expressions.

Author contributions

YW contributed to experimental design, data collection, data analysis, and paper writing. SZ contributed to data analysis and paper writing. ZZ and WF contributed to experimental design, data analysis, and paper writing.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China 31400868 and 31771200 (WF).

Post experiment interview

Did you notice the emotions from the photographs?

Did you feel down or happy by looking at the photographs?

Did you find anything odd about the task?

Did you notice anything strange of the photographs?

We're planning another study using magic—when people pick the face they prefer we're going to use a magic trick to present them with the picture that they didn't pick. Do you think you would notice if we did this?

Byrne D., Clore G. L. (1970). A reinforcement model of evaluative responses. Pers. Int. J. 1, 103–128. [ Google Scholar ]
Ebner N. C., Riediger M., Lindenberger U. (2010). Faces—a database of facial expressions in young, middle-aged, and older women and men: development and validation. Behav. Res. Methods 42:351 10.3758/BRM.42.1.351 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Fox E., Lester V., Russo R., Bowles R. J., Pichler A., Dutton K. (2000). Facial expressions of emotion: are angry faces detected more efficiently? Cogn. Emot. 14, 61–92. 10.1080/026999300378996 [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Gelstein S., Yeshurun Y., Rozenkrantz L., Shushan S., Frumin I., Roth Y. (2011). Human tears contain a chemosignal. Science 331, 226–230. 10.1126/science.1198331 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Gong X., Huang Y., Wang Y., Luo Y. (2011). Revision of the Chinese facial affective picture system. Chinese Ment. Health J. 25, 40–46. 10.3969/j.issn.1000-6729.2011.01.011 [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hall L., Johansson P., Tärning B., Sikström S., Deutgen T. (2010). Magic at the marketplace: choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea. Cognition 117, 54–61. 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.06.010 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hansen C. H., Hansen R. D. (1988). Finding the face in the crowd: an anger superiority effect. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 54, 917–924. 10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.917 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Holsti (1969). Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. [ Google Scholar ]
Johansson P., Hall L., Sikstrom S., Olsson A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science 310, 116–119. 10.1126/science.1111709 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Johansson P., Hall L., Sikström S., Tärning B., Lind A. (2006). How something can be said about telling more than we can know: on choice blindness and introspection. Conscious. Cogn. 15, 673–692. 10.1016/j.concog.2006.09.004 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Johansson P., Hall L., Tärning B., Sikström S., Chater N. (2014). Choice blindness and preference change: you will like this paper better if you (believe you) chose to read it! J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 27, 281–289. 10.1002/bdm.1807 [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
Lombard M., Snyder-Duch J., Bracken C. C. (2002). Content analysis in mass communication: assessment and reporting of intercoder reliability. Hum. Commun. Res. 28, 587–604. 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2002.tb00826.x [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
Marzi T., Viggiano M. P. (2010). When memory meets beauty: insights from event-related potentials. Biol. Psychol. 84, 192–205. 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.01.013 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Miyamoto Y., Yoshikawa S., Kitayama S. (2011). Feature and configuration in face processing: Japanese are more configural than Americans. Cogn. Sci. 35, 563–574. 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01163.x [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
Morrison E. R., Morris P. H., Bard K. A. (2013). The stability of facial attractiveness: is it what you've got or what you do with it? J. Nonverbal Behav. 37, 59–67. 10.1007/s10919-013-0145-1 [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
Mueser K., Grau B., Sussman S., Rosen A. (1984). You're only as pretty as you feel: facial expression as a determinant of physical attractiveness. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 46, 469–478 [ Google Scholar ]
Rhodes G. (2006). The evolutionary psychology of facial beauty. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 57, 199–226. 10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190208 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sagana A., Sauerland M., Merckelbach H. (2013). Witnesses' blindness for their own facial recognition decisions: a field study. Behav. Sci. Law 31, 624–636. 10.1002/bsl.2082 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sagana A., Sauerland M., Merckelbach H. (2014). Memory impairment is not sufficient for choice blindness to occur. Front. Psychol. 5:449 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00449 [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sauerland M., Sagana A., Siegmann K., Heiligers D., Merckelbach H., Jenkins R. (2016). These two are different. yes, they're the same: choice blindness for facial identity. Conscious. Cogn. 40:93. 10.1016/j.concog.2016.01.003 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Seidel E. M., Habel U., Kirschner M., Gur R. C., Derntl B. (2010). The impact of facial emotional expressions on behavioral tendencies in women and men. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 36, 500–507. 10.1037/a0018169 [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Seymour B., Dolan R. (2008). Emotion, decision making, and the amygdala. Neuron 58, 662–671. 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.05.020 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Somerville J., McGowan F. (2016). Can chocolate cure blindness? Investigating the effect of preference strength and incentives on the incidence of choice blindness. J. Behav. Exp. Econ. 61, 1–11. 10.1016/j.socec.2016.01.001 [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
Todorov A., Mandisodza A. N., Goren A., Hall C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science 308:1623. 10.1126/science.1110589 [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Tsukiura T., Cabeza R. (2008). Orbitofrontal and hippocampal contributions to memory for face-name associations: the rewarding power of a smile. Neuropsychologia 46, 2310–2319. 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.03.013 [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Willis J., Todorov A. (2010). First impressions: making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychol. Sci. 17, 592–598. 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01750.x [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
View on publisher site
PDF (674.4 KB)
Collections

Add to Collections

Skip to main content
Skip to primary sidebar
Skip to footer

Psychology Spot

All About Psychology

Choice blindness, don’t trust too much your decisions

We all suffer from choice blindness, although we usually do not realize it. If we ask ourselves why we made certain decisions in our lives, we are likely to provide very convincing explanations. We are sure to know our motives and reasons. However, psychological experiments show that in many cases we create these reasons ad hoc and a posteriori . In other words, our knowledge about the reasons that push us to make one decision and not another is not as solid or rational as we think.

What is choice blindness?

The concept of choice blindness, as this phenomenon is known, refers to a bias that prevents us from recognizing that on many occasions we are not fully aware of the reasons that lead us to make certain decisions. However, the mere fact of thinking that we made those decisions “forces” us to look for arguments to defend them. In practice, we suffer from an illusion of introspection that leads us to think that we know very well the origins of our emotions, thoughts, decisions and behaviors, when we don’t.

The surprising experiments that expose our choice blindness

In 2008, Petter Johansson and Lars Hall conducted a curious experiment. They recruited 20 young people, who were shown a pair of female faces, like the ones below, to choose the one that seemed most attractive to them.

Then the psychologists did a trick and changed the choice of the participants, asking them to explain why they had chosen that face. Amazingly, less than 30% of the subjects noticed that they had changed the image. In fact, in a later memory task, they used to remember the manipulated choice as their own.

That means that, even if we have visual preferences, our brain is not always able to remember them. “We are often unaware of the changes taking place in the world, even if they have consequences for our own actions,” the researchers noted.

Two years later a group of psychologists from Lund University continued this experiment on choice blindness. In this case they were not limited to the visual world, but extended it to taste and smell. The psychologists pretended to be independent consultants who wanted to assess the quality of a store’s jam and tea assortment and asked 180 people to help them.

They asked the participants to focus on the taste of the jam and the smell of the tea so that they could choose their preferred product from different samples. For example, one participant was asked to choose between a ginger and lime jam, or a cinnamon and apple versus a grapefruit one.

After tasting the jam in the jars or smelling the tea, people had to indicate how much they liked it on a scale of 1 to 10. Immediately after the choice, the psychologists asked the people to try the chosen option again and verbally explain their decision. The secret is that they had exchanged the products.

Again, less than a third of the participants realized that their choice were manipulated and even gave reasons to support their supposed choice. That means that the vast majority did not notice any difference between their choice and that of the researchers, even among those that were very different, such as the taste of a cinnamon apple jam and a bitter grapefruit jam.

However, the most curious thing is that we are not aware of how fallible our perceptions are. In that study, people were convinced that it was extremely easy to distinguish between both types of jam and teas. And they even insisted that they would always be able to tell them apart. Obviously, it was not.

We are all blind to our choice blindness

As a general rule, the more important a decision is to us, the more likely we are to pay attention to the different factors involved and the more difficult it is to be fooled. However, the message behind the phenomenon of choice blindness is clear: we should not rely too much on our capacity for introspection because it plays tricks on us.

This false security, for example, can lead us to invent reasons to support decisions that may have been correct at the time, but have lost their sense. It can also cause us to give undue importance to those reasons, thinking that they were the ones that led us to make a decision when in fact we built them to support it afterwards.

It can even make us assume as our own decisions those we make pushed by others. So we end up supporting other people’s decisions and letting them guide our lives, just because we trust too much in our level of self-knowledge to recognize that we can be victims of choice blindness.

On the other hand, being aware of choice blindness will allow us to be more flexible in our evaluations to change course when necessary, avoiding falling into rationalization mechanisms that bind us to decisions that perhaps are not even ours.

Hall, L. et. Al. (2010) Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea. Cognition ; 117(1):54-61.

Johansson, P. & Hall, L. (2008) From change blindness to choice blindness. PSYCHOLOGIA ; 51(2):1 42-155.

Jennifer Delgado

I am a psychologist and I spent several years writing articles for scientific journals specialized in Health and Psychology. I want to help you create great experiences. Learn more about me .

5 Behaviors You Could Unwittingly Intimidate Someone With

27/01/2025 By Jennifer Delgado

10 most valuable life lessons I learned from my dog

When you know it’s time to change?

25/01/2025 By Jennifer Delgado

Israel-Gaza War
War in Ukraine
US & Canada
UK Politics
N. Ireland Politics
Scotland Politics
Wales Politics
Latin America
Middle East
In Pictures
BBC InDepth
Executive Lounge
Technology of Business
Future of Business
Science & Health
Artificial Intelligence
AI v the Mind
Film & TV
Art & Design
Entertainment News
Arts in Motion
Destinations
Australia and Pacific
Caribbean & Bermuda
Central America
North America
South America
World’s Table
Culture & Experiences
The SpeciaList
Natural Wonders
Weather & Science
Climate Solutions
Sustainable Business
Green Living

Choice blindness: Do you know yourself as well as you think?

Asked to make a choice between two things - two faces, or two politicians, perhaps - you may think you know very well the reason you picked A rather than B. But do you? A Swedish psychologist thinks you don't.

You're shown two pictures - two women, or two men - and you're asked to rate which one you find most attractive. That's easy enough. But then you're asked to explain why.

That's harder. It might make you think. What is it you like about her? Is there something appealing about her eyes, perhaps? Or her hair? What is it about him? Maybe you like his strong jaw-line, or his perfect teeth.

But are these really the reasons you found one person more attractive than the other? Once you hear about Prof Petter Johansson's work, you may begin to have your doubts.

Swedish experimental psychologist Petter Johansson loves magic. He's not formally trained but he's taught himself some basic sleight of hand techniques. Magicians have long understood the phenomenon of "change blindness". By distracting you, a magician can change a card, say the King of Clubs for the King of Spades, and the chances are you won't notice.

Johansson's rudimentary magic skills are useful for his experiments - for, some years ago, he and his colleagues decided to test not change blindness but "choice blindness".

Let me explain. In his earliest experiment, Petter Johansson showed participants pairs of pictures of faces. The subjects had a simple task: to choose the one they found most attractive. Then they were given the picture and asked to justify their selection. But unbeknown to them, Johansson had deployed his magic to make a switch; they were actually handed the picture of the man or woman they had not picked.

Petter Johansson showing a female participant two photographs of men

You might assume that everyone would notice. If so, you would be wrong. Amazingly, only a quarter of people spot the switch. To repeat, the faces were of different people, and there were easily identifiable differences between them. One might be brown-haired and with earrings; the other might be blonde and with no earrings.

After the switch, the subjects explained why they had chosen the person they had actually not chosen! "When I asked them, why did you choose this face?" says Petter Johansson, "they started to elaborate on why this was the preferred face, even if, just a few seconds before, they had preferred the other face."

When he explained to them what he had done, he was usually met with surprise and often disbelief. The most intriguing cases were those in which people justified the manipulated choice by highlighting something absent in their original choice. "For instance, if they say, 'Oh, I prefer this face because I really like the earrings,' and the one they originally preferred didn't have any earrings, then we can be certain that whatever made them make this choice, it can't have been the earrings."

What can we conclude from this? Well, it turns out that we don't have a clear understanding of why we choose what we choose. We often have to figure it out for ourselves, just as we have to figure out the motives and reasons of others. The window through which we try to observe our own soul is dim and murky.

Why you believe one face is better-looking than another is hardly a trivial issue. Sexual appeal matters: the survival of the human species rather depends upon it. But Petter Johansson has also used his trickery to test our choices in another weighty domain - politics.

In one study, he asked a group of Swedish subjects a dozen questions about where they stood on political issues - such as whether there should be an increase in petrol tax, or whether healthcare benefits should be cut. These are topics which tend to divide the Swedish left and right. Their written survey answers were then handed to them, except - as you might by now have guessed - they were not the real ones. Left-wing people were shown answers which were more right-wing; right-wing people were shown answers that were more left-wing. And then they were asked to justify their selections.

Again, most people failed to spot the switch. A subject who a minute earlier had ticked a box supporting a rise in the petrol tax now proceeded to explain why they believed there should be no such tax hike. They gave explanations that made perfect sense. "They would say things like, 'Well it's unfair to the population living outside the major cities because they have to drive a lot more.'" So there was nothing odd about their rationalisation, except that a few minutes earlier they would not have supplied it.

Find out more

Listen to Petter Johansson in The fragility of choice, an episode of The Big Idea, on the BBC World Service
Click here for transmission times, or to listen online
Download the podcast

Clearly we lack self-knowledge about our motives and choices. But so what? What are the implications of this research?

Well, perhaps one general point is that we should learn to be more tolerant of people who change their minds. We tend to have very sensitive antennae for inconsistency - be this inconsistency in a partner, who's changed their mind on whether they fancy an Italian or an Indian meal, or a politician who's backed one policy in the past and now supports an opposing position. But as we often don't have a clear insight into why we choose what we choose, we should surely be given some latitude to switch our choices.

There may also be more specific implications for how we navigate through our current era - a period in which there is growing cultural and political polarisation. It would be natural to believe that those who support a left-wing or right-wing party do so because they're committed to that party's ideology: they believe in free markets or, the opposite, in a larger role for the state. But Petter Johansson's work suggests that our deeper commitment is not to particular policies, since, using his switching technique, we can be persuaded to endorse all sorts of policies. Rather, "we support a label or a team".

That is to say, we're liable to overestimate the extent to which a Trump supporter - or a Biden supporter - backs his or her candidate because of the policies the politician promotes. Instead, someone will be Team Trump, or Team Biden. A striking example of this was in the last US election. Republicans have traditionally been pro-free trade - but when Trump began to advocate protectionist policies, most Republicans carried on backing him, without even seeming to notice the shift.

Reuters Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton taking part in a presidential debate in 2016

Prior to the last US election - the bitterly contested 2016 race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton - Prof Johansson tried another experiment. He asked voters to rate their preferred candidate on their character, experience and so on, and then he switched their answers, improving the ratings of the candidate they disliked. It worked. People offered reasons why they were actually quite open-minded between the two.

Remarkably, such legerdemain turns out to have a lasting impact. Fool a person that they believe someone with blond hair is more attractive than one with brown, and they are likely to confirm that preference when shown the two faces at a later date. It's the same with political views. After swaying the political preferences of his subjects, Petter Johansson tested their views the following week. Having had to justify their new preferences, it seemed "they had listened to their own arguments".

You may also be interested in:

Reuters Woman in white facing line of riot police

Which are more effective, violent or non-violent protests? And how big does a protest have to be, to drive a political leader from office? One researcher, who has studied these questions carefully, thinks 3.5% of the population will nearly always succeed.

How many people does it take to oust a political leader?

IMAGES

Peter Johansson's Experiment: CHOICE BLINDNESS by Cimone Toppin on Prezi
GitHub
Choice Blindness
clipboard
How Choice Blindness Affects Your Decisions without You Knowing
Peter Johansson's Experiment and Choice Blindness

COMMENTS

Choice Blindness: Do You Notice If You Get What You Choose?">Choice Blindness: Do You Notice If You Get What You Choose?
Aug 14, 2023 · Scientists have termed this phenomenon “choice blindness." A series of experiments by the same group has revealed that choice blindness occurs in various contexts: For example, it takes place...
Choice Blindness? Definition and Examples - Explore Psychology">What Is Choice Blindness? Definition and Examples - Explore...
Nov 27, 2024 · Choice blindness is a psychological phenomenon in which people fail to notice a mismatch between their intended choice and the choice presented to them. In other words, it is a surprising tendency to be unaware that our choices and preferences have been changed or manipulated after we’ve already made a choice.
Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness – General Psychology">Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness – General Psychology
As psychological scientists, their goal is to explore an interesting phenomenon (i.e., choice blindness) to understand why it happens and to see if it tells us anything new about the way our minds work. You can learn the basics of the experiment conducted by Petter Johannson, Lars Hall and their colleagues by watching the following video [2].
Experiment and Choice Blindness - Explorable">Peter Johansson's Experiment and Choice Blindness - Explorable
Experiments on choice blindness can be used to provide a way to study subjectivity and introspection, topics once considered by scientists to be extremely difficult or even impossible to measure or evaluate scientifically.
Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness | Introduction to Psychology">Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness | Introduction to Psychology
Choice blindness is the failure to recall a choice immediately after we have made that choice. If you go to an ice cream store, order a chocolate cone, and then accept a strawberry cone without noticing, that is choice blindness.
Choice Blindness in Psychology - Verywell Mind">Choice Blindness in Psychology - Verywell Mind
Oct 23, 2023 · In a pioneering study on the concept of choice blindness, researchers Johansson, Hall, Sikstrom, and Olsson examined how people often overlook differences between their intentions and outcomes. The study involved having participants look at images of two different female faces for between two to five seconds.
Choice Blindness - PMC">Sad Facial Expressions Increase Choice Blindness - PMC
Jan 8, 2018 · Using faces with sad and neutral expressions (Experiment 1) and faces with happy and neutral expressions (Experiment 2) in the classic choice blindness paradigm, the present study investigated the effects of facial expressions on choice blindness.
Choice blindness, don’t trust too much your decisions - Psychology Spot">Choice blindness, don’t trust too much your decisions -...
The surprising experiments that expose our choice blindness. In 2008, Petter Johansson and Lars Hall conducted a curious experiment. They recruited 20 young people, who were shown a pair of female faces, like the ones below, to choose the one that seemed most attractive to them.
Choice blindness: Do you know yourself as well as you think? - BBC">Choice blindness: Do you know yourself as well as you think? - ...
In his earliest experiment, Petter Johansson showed participants pairs of pictures of faces. The subjects had a simple task: to choose the one they found most attractive. Then they were given...
Failure to Detect Mismatches Between Intention and Outcome in a...
Oct 7, 2005 · We investigated the relation between intention, choice, and introspection. Participants made choices between presented face pairs on the basis of attractiveness, while we covertly manipulated the relationship between choice and outcome that they experienced.

Choice Blindness: Do You Notice If You Get What You Choose?

What Is Choice Blindness? Definition and Examples

Definition of Choice Blindness

The Psychology of Choice

Research on Choice Blindness

The Experiment

Manipulation and Misdirection

Revealing the Discrepancy

Analysis and Implications

Causes of Choice Blindness

Cognitive Biases

Memory Distortion

Perceptual Errors

Environmental Factors

Cognitive Dissonance

Examples of Choice Blindness

Menu Choices

Shopping Selections

Clothing Preferences

Survey Responses

Product Customization

Political Preferences

How to Overcome Choice Blindness

Slow Down and Reflect

Increased Attention to Details

Double-Check Choices

Mindful Decision-Making

Question Your Choices

Seek Feedback from Others

Educate Yourself on Cognitive Biases

Keep a Decision-Making Journal

Key Points to Remember

Related Articles:

Examples of the Serial Position Effect

Cognitive Bias: Common Types and How to Avoid Them

Examples of Confirmation Bias (and How to Overcome It)

Fundamental Attribution Error: Definition and Examples

What Is Crystallized Intelligence? Definition and Examples

What Is the Barnum Effect in Psychology?

Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness

Choice Blindness

The Attraction Preference Experiment

But is it Real? The Value of Replication

Link to Learning

From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration

Two Variables: Time and Similarity

What Do These Results Tell Us?

A Final Thought

Share This Book

Search form

Choice Blindness

This article is a part of the guide:

Browse Full Outline

Statement of the Problem

Methodology

Application

You Are Allowed To Copy The Text

Want to stay up to date? Follow us!

Footer bottom

Thinking and Intelligence

Choice Blindness

The Attraction Preference Experiment

But is it Real? The Value of Replication

Link to Learning

From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration

Two Variables: Time and Similarity

What Do These Results Tell Us?

A Final Thought

Candela Citations

Choice Blindness in Psychology

What the Research Says

Sad Facial Expressions Increase Choice Blindness

Introduction

Materials and methods

Data analysis

Experiment 1: larger choice blindness was found for sad faces than neutral faces

Verbal reports

Experiment 2: moderate choice blindness was found for happy and neutral faces

Follow-up analysis: sad faces were less attractive than happy and neutral faces

Author contributions