At Least I Don't Have that One! The Role of Construal and Memory in Post-Decision Dissonance

Abstract

When people make a difficult choice between two desirable alternatives, they experience inconsistency between the positive qualities of the unchosen alternative and the negative qualities of the chosen alternative. One way that people can reduce the inconsistency is to change their attitudes toward the alternatives. This means that they will begin to like their chosen alternative more and like their unchosen alternative less. Past research has focused on cases where people were asked to accept one of two desirable alternatives. The present research aimed to manipulate the framing of the decision, such that some participants were asked to accept one of two alternatives, and some were asked to reject one of two alternatives. Across 4 studies, we found that when people focus on rejecting an alternative, they show less dissonance reduction (spreading) than when they accept an alternative (Brehm, 1956). Specifically, whereas those accepting have been shown to significantly bolster their chosen alternative and significantly derogate their unchosen alternative, those rejecting have been shown to only significantly derogate their unchosen alternative. We have conducted a meta-analysis of these four studies that demonstrated that this general pattern holds up across all the studies. Study 5 found initial evidence that the lack of bolstering in the rejection condition could be due in part to a lack of recall of the pros about the chosen alternative. This may signify that those rejecting aren’t encoding the same number of pros as those choosing which may be pointing to a trivialization process at the time of the decision. Indeed, we find marginally less discomfort in the rejection condition compared to the accepting condition. Future research needs to be done to further elaborate on these findings.