Considering Roads Taken and Not Taken: How Psychological Distance Influences the Framing of Choice Events

Abstract

After people make choices, they can frame the choice event in terms of what they chose, or in terms of what they did not choose. The current research proposes psychological distance as one factor influencing this framing and suggests implications. Three experiments manipulated dimensions of distance to demonstrate people's greater tendency to frame choice events in terms of chosen options at greater psychological distances. Additional findings demonstrate that these effects occur regardless of whether the decision turned out well or poorly. In a final experiment, framing a decision in terms of choosing (versus not choosing) a task made people more likely to believe their choice reflected their liking for the chosen task, which led to more favorable expectations for it. The discussion focuses on possible implications of these findings for understanding prior work on self-other differences in decision making, motivations for past decisions, reactions to decision outcomes, and counterfactual thinking.

Psychological distance in consumer psychology: Consequences and antecedents

“…Here, psychological distance colors not only what consumers choose but also how consumers reflect on decisions after making them. Consumers cannot help but think about foregone options when the choice is fresh in their memory (i.e., is psychologically close) but think less about those roads not taken as the choice recedes farther into the past (Valenti & Libby, ). This shift in memory over time regarding choices helps to explain why consumers regret failing to choose anything (i.e., failing to take action) as time goes by (Gilovich & Medvec, ; Leach & Plaks, ).…”