Reasons Analysis

What it is

Timothy Wilson and Jonathan Schooler asked students to rate strawberry jams. Some first wrote down why they felt the way they did about each one. Those who explained agreed less with experts' ratings of the jams than those who simply tasted. In a second study, on choosing college courses, both analysing reasons and rating every attribute of every course reduced agreement with expert opinion.

The authors' account is that explaining focuses attention on reasons that are easy to put into words, which are not always the ones that matter. A 1993 follow-up let people choose a poster to take home. Those who analysed their reasons chose a different kind of poster and were less satisfied with it a few weeks later.

In effect

For choices made mainly on taste or feel, a long list of reasons is a risk, because the words can replace the preference. For choices made on criteria that can be stated and checked, such as price or warranty, writing the reasons down is useful.

For researchers who ask customers why they bought something, the finding is a warning: asking may change the answer, and the answer may not describe what drove the purchase.

What it does not say

It does not say thinking is bad, or that you should trust your gut. The opposite claim, that unconscious thought produces better decisions, found no support in a large 2015 replication.

It has not been directly replicated at modern standards. A 1999 re-examination supported the effect and proposed a different mechanism, that introspection reduced how carefully people processed information.

It is distinct from verbal overshadowing, the better-tested finding about describing faces, and gains no direct support from it.

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