A massive experiment on choice blindness in political decisions: Confidence, confabulation, and unconscious detection of self-deception.

Andrés Rieznik,Mariano Sigman,Rodrigo Catalano,Lorena Moscovich,Facundo Álvarez Heduan,Juan Manuel Garrido,Alan Frieiro,Pablo A Gonzalez,Julieta Figini,Asim Zia

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0171108

Abstract

We implemented a Choice Blindness Paradigm containing political statements in Argentina to reveal the existence of categorical ranges of introspective reports, identified by confidence and agreement levels, separating easy from very hard to manipulate decisions. CBP was implemented in both live and web-based forms. Importantly, and contrary to what was observed in Sweden, we did not observe changes in voting intentions. Also, confidence levels in the manipulated replies where significantly lower than in non-manipulated cases even in undetected manipulations. We name this phenomenon unconscious detection of self-deception. Results also show that females are more difficult to manipulate than men.

Highlights

IntroductionHow accurate are the explanations we offer ourselves for the things we do and the choices we make?
How accurate are the explanations we offer ourselves for the things we do and the choices we make? As Moore and Haggard pointed out [1], this was a question famously tackled by Nisbett and Wilson (1977) in their seminal article “Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes” [2]
We found that 60% of them (n = 492) expressed lower confidence in the two M than in the two nonmanipulated answers (NM) statements (p < 1e-171 according to a one-tailed binomial test considering the null hypothesis that confidence reports in N and NM trials are distributed)

Summary

Introduction

How accurate are the explanations we offer ourselves for the things we do and the choices we make? Stage magicians have exploited for centuries the inability to recognize the external factors that drive our choices. The word “forcing” is used in magic to describe the act in which the performer forces an option to the participant, who reports to have chosen freely among all possible options. As with other central tenets of the cognitive underpinnings of magic [3, 4], in psychological forcing the performer profits from the fact that only little and often distorted information is available to the spectator’s introspective constructs. The aim of the current study is to determine a subject’s ability to recognize the elements of internal argumentation that lead to choices

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion