Tuesday, 12 June 2018
We Are Blind to Many of the Reasons for Our Conscious Choices
In a study that they conducted in 2005, entitled “Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task”, Lars Hall and Peter Johansson uncovered a spectacular phenomenon. In this experiment, the researchers showed their subjects pairs of cards with pictures of two different people’s faces and asked their subjects to pick whichever of the two people they found more attractive. Once a subject had made this choice, the experimenter took back the cards and then, using a little sleight of hand, gave the subject back the card that he or she had not chosen and asked what it was about the person pictured that made them more attractive. Over 80% of the subjects failed to notice that they had been given the wrong card and actually provided the kind of verbal explanation requested—that it was the expressiveness of the person’s eyes or the overall harmoniousness of their features, or what have you. (more…)
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