Distinction bias: a psychological phenomenon of decision making

We all consider ourselves rational people, who like to think coldly when making a certain decision.

However, to what extent are we really capable of objectively evaluating the benefits of choosing one path or another?

Distinction bias is a very common phenomenon. that allows us to understand how people behave in our decision-making, in addition to justifying it depending on the context in which we have made it. Let's dig in below.

• Related article: "Cognitive biases: discovering an interesting psychological effect"

What is the distinction bias?

The distinction bias is the tendency to overestimate the effect of small quantitative differences when comparing different options, be they materialized in products, services or, simply, personal decisions. This trend appears or not depending on whether the comparison of these options is carried out joint or, on the contrary, there is no decision and you are living or having something that cannot be Modify.

The term was first described in 2004 thanks to research by Christopher L. Hsee and Jiao Zhang. These researchers observed that people,

when we have to choose between a certain product within a wide range of possibilities, we tend to search and find all the differences between them, no matter how small and unimportant they may be at first hand. So, depending on these small details, our preferences lean towards one or another product, service or decision.

During this process we overestimate the degree of happiness that the decision we are making will imply. We fear that, by choosing the less suitable or less better, it will cause us a high degree of discomfort or discomfort, and we also fear that we will regret it in the long term.

However, if we do not have the possibility to choose between several options, as is often the case in life itself, it seems as if we willingly settle. This means that, when we cannot compare an event with others nor do we have the decision-making capacity, the possible differences among other options that we have not been able to enjoy, we do not seem to care, feeling satisfied with what we already have.

• You may be interested in: "Are we rational or emotional beings?"

Comparison mode and experience mode

To facilitate the understanding of the distinction bias, it is necessary to explain the two cognitive phenomena that it implies: the comparison mode and the experience mode.

People go into comparison mode when, having several options, we begin to look for all kinds of differences between them. to make sure we make the right decision.

Instead, we find ourselves in experience mode when there is no other option, he has touched us a certain thing that we cannot change and we have to settle for it, but willingly.

To exemplify both the bias and these two modes, we will see the following case of a man and an apple-based gift:

We have in front of us a man who is sitting in front of a table, and we ask him the following question: would you like to eat an apple? The man, seeing that he is offered to him for free, and without expecting it, a fruit, responds in the affirmative. So we give him the fruit, which is already a few days old but still good, and the man begins to eat it very happily.

Now let's imagine this same situation, only that instead of offering him an apple we offer him two, and we tell him that he can only choose one of them. It is then that we present both pieces of fruit: the same apple from the previous case, still good but with a few days, and another apple which looks much fresher and more appetizing. The man, after evaluating both pieces of fruit, opts for the freshest apple.

In this second situation, if we asked the man if he thinks he would have been happier choosing the apple that he did not look like. be fresh, surely he would tell us no, that it would not make much sense to have taken the oldest apple when he could choose the better.

In the situation where there was only one apple the person would have entered experiential mode, since you do not have to choose between several options. He is simply presented with the apple and invited to eat it. He doesn't have to compare her to other better or worse ones.

On the other hand, in the second situation, the man you have entered compare mode. Despite the fact that both apples were edible, with the same nutritional value, the same breed of vegetable and a long etcetera, the simple fact that one was younger than the other has made the person perceive her as the best of the two options. Choosing the best of the apples that could be presented to him, he feels happier than he thinks he would be if he had chosen what, for him, must be the worst.

real life examples

Marketing works on the distinguishing bias. If people did not choose to buy what we consider to be the best, most of us would choose to buy the cheapest, regardless of aspects as supposedly banal as the color of the product packaging, the prestige of the brand behind it, all the extras that supposedly includes…

We have a clear example of this in the world of electronics. Let's say that we want to buy a television and we are in a store specializing in this type of appliance. In theory, all the televisions that have been placed next to each other in the store serve the same purpose: watch television channels. However, the prices of these products vary greatly, and the extras of each model are very different from each other.

This is when the time comes to choose the new TV and we do not decide which one to choose. Logic would tell us to take the cheapest one, since, after all, it will be used for the same thing, regardless of its extras or price. However, we are opting for the most expensive, those that seem to be the best on the market and that, in our minds, differ enormously from those that are only worth a little less.

Another example, this much more mundane, we have with the world of food. In the supermarkets there are sections in which you can find both private label cookies and those with a prestigious name behind them. A certain brand of cocoa biscuits with a cream interior is well known and seems to be the favorite of many people. However, these same cookies exist in their low cost format, at half the price, with a very similar flavor.

Despite the fact that both cookies are practically the same, they taste the same, they have the same nutritional values ​​(few, since the cookies are not healthy food) and opting for the cheapest product would be the most logical option, the most expensive brand, at twice the price, is the most consumed. The reason this is done is that, in addition to buying expensive products being seen as synonymous with power, all the marketing behind and presenting these cookies helps the most expensive brand.

Bibliographic references:

• Hsee, C.K. (1998). Less is better: When low-value options are valued more highly than high-value options. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. 11 (2): 107–121. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199806)11:2<107::AID-BDM292>3.0.CO; 2 AND
• Hsee, C.K.; Leclerc, F. (1998). Will products look more attractive when presented separately or together? The Journal of Consumer Research. 25 (2): 175–186. doi: 10.1086/209534
• Hsee, C.K.; Zhang, J. (2004). Distinction bias: Misprediction and mischoice due to joint evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 86 (5): 680–695. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.484.9171