Inducing preference reversals in aesthetic choices for paintings: Introducing the contrast paradigm

Zorry Belchev, Glen E Bodner and Jonathan M Fawcett

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: Understanding what leads people to reverse their choices is important in many domains. We introduce a contrast paradigm for studying reversals in choices—here between pairs of abstract paintings—implemented in both within-subject (Experiment 1; N = 320) and between-subject (Experiment 2; N = 384) designs. On each trial, participants chose between a pair of paintings. A critical pair of average-beauty paintings was presented before and after either a reversal or control block. In the reversal block, we made efforts to bias preference away from the chosen average-beauty painting (by pairing it with more-beautiful paintings) and toward the non-chosen average-beauty painting (by pairing it with less-beautiful paintings). Meta-analysis revealed more reversals after reversal blocks than after control blocks, though only when the biasing manipulations succeeded. A second meta-analysis revealed that reversals were generally more likely for participants who later misidentified their initial choice, demonstrating that memory for initial choices influences later choices. Thus, the contrast paradigm has utility both for inducing choice reversals and identifying their causes.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196246 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 96246&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0196246

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196246

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().