Abstract
While cognitive dissonance is an influential concept of social psychology, its relations with consciousness and episodic memory remain strongly debated. We recently used the free-choice paradigm (FCP) to demonstrate the crucial role of conscious memory of previous choices on choice-induced preference change (CIPC). After choosing between two similarly rated items, subjects reevaluated chosen items as more attractive, and rejected items as less attractive. However such a CIPC was present exclusively for items that were correctly remembered as chosen or rejected during the choice stage, both in healthy controls and in amnesic patients. In the present work, we show that CIPC can be modulated by suggestive quotes promoting self-coherence or self-incoherence. In addition to the crucial role of memory of previous choices, we discovered that memory of the suggestive quotes was correlated to the modulation of CIPC. Taken together these results suggest that CIPC reflects a dynamic homeostatic regulation of self-coherence.
Highlights
While it is very intuitive that our current preferences and values influence our future choices, the reverse causality is much less easy to predict and explain
In the present study we provide such a demonstration, and reveal that episodic memory of the suggestive quotes is correlated to the modulation of choice-induced preference change (CIPC) in the free-choice paradigm (FCP)
We discovered a significant impact of quotes promoting incoherence as a general cognitive posture, on CIPC, as compared to neutral quotes and to quotes promoting coherence
Summary
While it is very intuitive that our current preferences and values influence our future choices, the reverse causality is much less easy to predict and explain. A univocal way to control for this artifact consists in using a new control condition during which subjects perform their two ratings before the choice stage (RRC), in addition to the traditional rating/choice/rating sequence (RCR) Taking these artefacts into account, we recently solved this debate about CIPC and memory, by reproducibly showing that CIPC occurs exclusively for items that were correctly remembered as chosen or rejected during the choice stage [3, 4]. Cialdini et al [10] showed that when a specific norm was made salient to the participants, their behavior tended to follow that norm Note that these two studies did not explore the FCP in which the issue of automaticity is still strongly debated. In the present study we provide such a demonstration, and reveal that episodic memory of the suggestive quotes is correlated to the modulation of CIPC in the FCP
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