Empirical Signatures of Choice-Induced Preference Change
Abstract
Choice-induced preference change refers to the tendency for value estimates to differ after a choice relative to before it. Although this phenomenon is robust, the process that generates it remains debated. In this work, we reanalyzed pooled data from two previous studies to identify empirical signatures to serve as benchmarks for candidate process accounts of choice-induced preference change. We focused on three factors that are especially informative for theory: choice difficulty, deliberation time, and the attribute structure of the options. First, we reproduced the well-established finding that the spreading of alternatives is greater for more difficult choices. Second, we showed that its relationship with response time remains after controlling for difficulty, indicating that the relationship with deliberation time is not reducible to initial value difference alone. Third, we found that preference change depends not only on overall value difference but also on how the options differ in terms of their attributes, with stronger effects for choices laden with tradeoffs than for cases of simple dominance. Together, these results indicate that choice-induced preference change is tied to deliberation itself rather than to a post hoc or artifactual revision of fixed values. The findings are compatible with both value-refinement and coherence-based reasoning accounts in some respects, but they also constrain both by showing that preference change depends jointly on difficulty, deliberation time, and attribute structure.
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BibTeX
@misc{lee2026empirical,
title = {{Empirical Signatures of Choice-Induced Preference Change}},
author = {Douglas G. Lee and Giovanni Pezzulo},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/vrh3w_v2},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/vrh3w_v2/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Empirical Signatures of Choice-Induced Preference Change
AU - Douglas G. Lee
AU - Giovanni Pezzulo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/vrh3w_v2
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/vrh3w_v2/
AB - Choice-induced preference change refers to the tendency for value estimates to differ after a choice relative to before it. Although this phenomenon is robust, the process that generates it remains debated. In this work, we reanalyzed pooled data from two previous studies to identify empirical signatures to serve as benchmarks for candidate process accounts of choice-induced preference change. We focused on three factors that are especially informative for theory: choice difficulty, deliberation time, and the attribute structure of the options. First, we reproduced the well-established finding that the spreading of alternatives is greater for more difficult choices. Second, we showed that its relationship with response time remains after controlling for difficulty, indicating that the relationship with deliberation time is not reducible to initial value difference alone. Third, we found that preference change depends not only on overall value difference but also on how the options differ in terms of their attributes, with stronger effects for choices laden with tradeoffs than for cases of simple dominance. Together, these results indicate that choice-induced preference change is tied to deliberation itself rather than to a post hoc or artifactual revision of fixed values. The findings are compatible with both value-refinement and coherence-based reasoning accounts in some respects, but they also constrain both by showing that preference change depends jointly on difficulty, deliberation time, and attribute structure.
ER -