When Not Choosing Leads to Not Liking: Choice-Induced Preference in Infancy

Abstract

The question of how people’s preferences are shaped by their choices has generated decades of research. In a classic example, work on cognitive dissonance has found that observers who must choose between two equally attractive options subsequently avoid the unchosen option, suggesting that not choosing the item led them to like it less. However, almost all of the research on such choice-induced preference focuses on adults, leaving open the question of how much experience is necessary for its emergence. Here, we examined the developmental roots of this phenomenon in preverbal infants ( N = 189). In a series of seven experiments using a free-choice paradigm, we found that infants experienced choice-induced preference change similar to adults’. Infants’ choice patterns reflected genuine preference change and not attraction to novelty or inherent attitudes toward the options. Hence, choice shapes preferences—even without extensive experience making decisions and without a well-developed self-concept.

Cognitive Dissonance from 2 years of age: Toddlers’, but not infants’, blind choices induce preferences

“…At what age infants or toddlers start perceiving cognitive dissonance also remains an open question. Do preverbal infants' preferences in Silver et al (2020) indeed already reflect cognitive dissonance or do the blind choice-induced preferences from 2 years of age in the current study mark the emergence of cognitive dissonance? Two approaches could be taken to clarify this question.…”

“…It is possible, however, that toddlers' blind choice-induced preferences still require the presence of self-awareness but that other factors, like the ability to deal with absent referents, are also necessary. Thus, it could be tested whether the preferences induced by non-blind, tricked choices in 10-to 20-months-old infants (Silver et al, 2020) are related to early markers of self-concept development in the second year of life, as tested in the current study. It is also possible that blind choice-induced preferences are related to other, laterdeveloping aspects of the self-concept, such as temporally extended self-concept, self-related memory, or the understanding of ownership.…”

“…Two approaches could be taken to clarify this question. First, a control condition in Silver et al's tricked choice experiment would help ensuring that infants' preferences in Silver et al (2020) were indeed induced by what they believe to have been their choice and not by other aspects of the trick situation (e.g., by avoiding the object they had been tricked on and therefore going for the neutral object, exactly as observed in Silver et al, 2020). A control condition in which children are not predicted to prefer the neutral object, similar to the one employed in our study or previous studies (Egan et al, 2008(Egan et al, , 2010) could clarify whether infants' preferences in Silver et al (2010) were indeed induced by their choice.…”

Cognitive dissonance from 2 years of age: Toddlers', but not infants', blind choices induce preferences

“…Taken together, these studies convincingly show that choice-induced preferences are present from at least 4 years of age, raising the question when this phenomenon develops. Recently, choicerelated preferences were also observed in preverbal infants aged between 10 and 20 months (Silver et al, 2020). While infants avoided a previously unchosen toy when they had been able to see the objects in their initial choice, this preference disappeared when infants' chose blindly, without knowing the objects' identity.…”

“…Since the 1950s, an overwhelming body of research has confirmed choice-induced preferences and other cognitive dissonance phenomena in adults. While being one of the most studied theories in modern social psychology, research has only recently embarked on trying to understand its ontogeny in human development (Egan, Santos, Bloom, 2007;Egan, Bloom, Santos, 2010;Silver et al, 2020). Moreover, after more than 60 years of research and theory building on this phenomenon, its underlying cognitive mechanisms are still hotly debated (e.g., Harmon-Jones, 2019;Cooper, 2007Cooper, , 2019McGrath, 2017).…”