Choice-Supportive Bias
🇳🇴Valgstøttende skjevhetDefinition
Choice-supportive bias is the tendency to remember the choice we made as better – and the alternatives we rejected as worse – than they actually were. Retrospective evaluation skews in favor of what we've already decided.
Real-world example
Mather, Shafir, and Johnson (2000) had participants choose between two alternatives described with both positive and negative traits. Later, they asked participants to remember which traits belonged to which alternative. People systematically misremembered positive traits as belonging to what they'd chosen, and negative traits as belonging to what they'd rejected – even when the traits were actually reversed.
The effect explains why people who bought car A often later speak warmly of features car B actually had, and why employees who chose a job remember the rejected job as less attractive than they experienced it during the interview.
Supplementary perspective
The effect is closely related to cognitive dissonance and post-purchase rationalization: the brain reduces psychological discomfort by touching up the decision after it's been made. It's not just a memory problem – it affects future choices because we learn the wrong lessons from 'what worked.'
Practical advice
Recognize
- —Notice if you remember the rejected alternative as worse than it actually was.
- —Check whether your rating of the choice has improved without new information.
- —Watch when you defend an old choice with arguments you didn't have when you made it.
Counteract
- —Write down pros/cons for each alternative *before* choosing, and return to the list when evaluating.
- —Distinguish evaluating the decision (given what you knew) from evaluating the outcome.
- —Ask someone who didn't make the choice to re-evaluate the alternatives.
Ethical use
- —In hiring: document why candidates were selected or rejected to avoid self-confirming stories.
- —In purchasing: preserve the decision rationale for later learning.
- —In learning: honestly distinguish 'good decision' from 'lucky outcome.'