Reading
Choice-Supportive Bias
People often make decisions by considering the advantages and disadvantages of each option. However, after a person selects an option, there is a tendency for that person to exhibit the choice-supportive bias. After selecting an option, a person may begin to favor that option. Without being fully aware of it, people who exhibit this bias tend to focus on and remember only the advantages of the option they selected. As time passes, they will overlook the option’s disadvantages, eventually even forgetting them.
Listening
Narrator: Now listen to part of a lecture on this topic in a Psychology class.
Professor: Okay, so an example of this from my own life.
Five or six years ago,
I was helping a friend of mine decide on a house to buy.
He had been in the market to buy a house,
and he had it narrowed down to this one house that he was interested in.
What he really liked about this house was it had an excellent location.
It was in a great place that was actually in the same part of town where he was working,
right up the street from his job.
So he wouldn't have far to drive to get to work, which he really liked.
However, the downside of this house was that it was smaller than what he was hoping to buy.
He'd wanted to buy a sort of a big house, and this house just wasn't that big.
So it was a tough decision.
But my friend eventually did decide to buy the house.
And a few years after he made the purchase,
I remember we were talking about the decision and why he decided to buy the house.
He told me, well, of course, it was because of the house's location.
He told me how happy he was with the fact that it was so close to his work,
how great it was that it was only a few minutes from his job.
I said, yes, but what about its size?
Do you still think the house is kind of small?
And he looked at me kind of surprised.
"Small? What do you mean small?"
Like he didn't know what I was talking about.
The house's the size, a couple of years after buying it,
just didn't seem to be on his mind anymore.
Question
Explain how the example from the professor’s lecture illustrates the choice-supportive bias.
