Babies' random choices become their preferences

Date:
October 2, 2020
Source:
Johns Hopkins University
Summary:
When a baby reaches for one stuffed animal in a room filled with
others just like it, that random choice is very bad news for those
unpicked toys: the baby has likely just decided she doesn't like
what she didn't choose. Researchers have known that adults build
unconscious biases over a lifetime of choosing between things
that are essentially the same, but finding that even babies do it
demonstrates this way of justifying choice is fundamental to the
human experience.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
When a baby reaches for one stuffed animal in a room filled with others
just like it, that seemingly random choice is very bad news for those
unpicked toys: the baby has likely just decided she doesn't like what
she didn't choose.


========================================================================== Though researchers have long known that adults build unconscious biases
over a lifetime of making choices between things that are essentially the
same, the new Johns Hopkins University finding that even babies engage
in this phenomenon demonstrates that this way of justifying choice is
intuitive and somehow fundamental to the human experience.

"The act of making a choice changes how we feel about our options,"
said co- author Alex Silver, a former Johns Hopkins undergraduate who's
now a graduate student in cognitive psychology at the University of
Pittsburgh. "Even infants who are really just at the start of making
choices for themselves have this bias." The findings are published
today in the journal Psychological Science.

People assume they choose things that they like. But research suggests
that's sometimes backwards: We like things because we choose them. And,
we dislike things that we don't choose.

"I chose this, so I must like it. I didn't choose this other thing, so
it must not be so good. Adults make these inferences unconsciously," said co-author Lisa Feigenson, a Johns Hopkins cognitive scientist specializing
in child development. "We justify our choice after the fact." This makes
sense for adults in a consumer culture who must make arbitrary choices
every day, between everything from toothpaste brands to makes of cars
to styles of jeans. The question, for Feigenson and Silver, was when
exactly people start doing this. So they turned to babies, who don't
get many choices so, as Feigenson puts it, are "a perfect window into
the origin of this tendency."


==========================================================================
The team brought 10- to 20-month-old babies into the lab and gave
them a choice of objects to play with: two equally bright and colorful
soft blocks.

They set each block far apart, so the babies had to crawl to one or the
other - - a random choice.

After the baby chose one of the toys, the researchers took it away and
came back with a new option. The babies could then pick from the toy
they didn't play with the first time, or a brand new toy.

"The babies reliably chose to play with the new object rather than
the one they had previously not chosen, as if they were saying, 'Hmm, I
didn't choose that object last time, I guess I didn't like it very much,'
" Feigenson said. "That is the core phenomenon. Adults will like less
the thing they didn't choose, even if they had no real preference in the
first place. And babies, just the same, dis-prefer the unchosen object."
In follow-up experiments, when the researchers instead chose which toy
the baby would play with, the phenomenon disappeared entirely. If you
take the element of choice away, Feigenson said, the phenomenon goes away.

"They are really not choosing based on novelty or intrinsic preference,"
Silver said. "I think it's really surprising. We wouldn't expect infants
to be making such methodical choices." To continue studying the evolution
of choice in babies, the lab will next look at the idea of "choice
overload." For adults, choice is good, but too many choices can be a
problem, so the lab will try to determine if that is also true for babies.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Johns_Hopkins_University. Original
written by Jill Rosen.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Alex M. Silver, Aimee E. Stahl, Rita Loiotile, Alexis
S. Smith-Flores,
Lisa Feigenson. When Not Choosing Leads to Not Liking:
Choice-Induced Preference in Infancy. Psychological Science, 2020;
095679762095449 DOI: 10.1177/0956797620954491 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201002091027.htm

--- up 5 weeks, 4 days, 6 hours, 50 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1337:3/111)