CHOICE

“Each day I am closer and closer to an understanding.
Because every exit is an open door. Every going out
then moving in is for some brief moment
a single event. Step now, and suffer. A street
branches out to a street. What does it mean
to have a CHOICE?”

~ “Epiphany,” by Raymond de Borja

Common sense tells us that all the steps we’ve made so far in this life is but a function of our intentions. That the object of our intentions and our intentions themselves are bound to be one and the same. Could an alternate frame of thinking actually exist where our intentions are independent of our actions and choices?

Life is a one way street, they say. That the only way of moving on and making sense of life is forward destined. That intentions must precede actions. That choices are defined before making the choice itself. Paradoxical as it may sound, a new phenomenon in experimental psychology is clamoring for the possibility of intentions being defined after the choice was made. Johansson and colleagues (2005) called it CHOICE BLINDNESS.

Choice blindness stemmed from an interest to call for research targeted towards the evaluation of the importance of intention, action and introspection in perception. Its umbrella phenomenon, change blindness, was exhaustively researched for years but surprisingly lacked any relevant information related to tasks of practical and subjective importance to us.

Researchers of change blindness (Rensink, 2002; Triesch et al., 2003 in Johansson, Hall & Sikstrom, 2008) have proven that we are more likely to detect change when the parts or elements that were changed are relevant to the scene, of central interest to us, or  something where we have prior knowledge. Since choice blindness also involves changing stimuli, it would be logical to assume that it follows the same trend. It would be easier to detect changes in more familiar objects than novel or unfamiliar ones.

To better understand how change blindness works, our group (De Guzman, Molina, Orbe, & Rivera, 2012) made a small experimental attempt situating choice manipulation detection as a dependent variable of two independent variables: 1) IMAGE TYPE & 2) BACKGROUND COLOR. The former to differentiate detection rates between a familiar stimuli (faces) and a novel one (abstract images) and the latter to know the extent of the influence of peripheral stimuli (i.e. colors).

The experiment goes like this: Individuals were asked to choose one from every photo pair (5 pairs of faces and 5 pairs of abstract images) which they find more attractive or appealing. After which, they were shown once again their choice and were requested to explain the reason for the decision. At some trials, however, their original choice was manipulated; that is, they were presented the unchosen photograph instead.

About 56% of the participants failed to detect that their choice was altered. This decreased to 37% when the participants were explicitly asked whether or not something changed during the experiment. In particular, only about 17% of them were able to detect change when face photographs were used, and this increased to 50% when abstract photographs were presented. The huge discrepancy could be accounted for by the top-down processing of face photos, and the bottom-up processing of abstract photos. Since facial perception involves a holistic discernment of component parts, lesser attention may have been paid to its details. On the contrary, non-face images are susceptible to part decomposition, thus eliciting greater attention to perceive unfamiliar patterns.

Color was also found to influence the rate of change detection, but its effects are limited to the face photographs. Again, since analysis of faces is global, effects of background elements are more pronounced. Conversely, isolation or localization of elements in abstract images because of the lack of configural processing might have moderated the influence of colors in the rate of detection.

Having made to believe they made a choice they actually did not lead to the participants’ failure to recall their original choice. The time they spent looking at their manipulated choice while reasoning out increased their attention to its details, thereby enhancing the encoding process (Goldstein, 2010; Chun & Turk-Browne, 2007). Thus, the increase of the recall probability of images they actually did not choose but reasoned out for.

The perceived attractiveness or aesthetic appeal between the original choice and manipulated choice, nonetheless, were insignificantly different. This was argued to be because of the high similarity between every pair of photographs used.

Although not without its shortcomings, our experiment’s main point goes to show that prior knowledge or relevance does not necessarily lead to easier detection of change, at least in setups where active choice is involved. In fact, familiarity might have triggered top-down holistic approaches of viewing that even lessened the chances of detecting the manipulation. Furthermore, introspection evidenced through verbal explanation of preference still challenges the idea of the precedence of intention attributions before actions or choices are done.

***

“Every exit is an open door...”

Maybe change is not too bad. Maybe an ending does not mean stopping. Maybe, just maybe, standing by a choice matters more than the mere act of choosing.

Whether decisions lead to blind spots because you have done them in familiar circumstances as the results of the experiment suggests, or it leads you to be more attentive because of its relative novelty, it all boils down to the person you are and the person you want to become. In this world where the value of mistakes are underrated and the drive for external success is hyped, we can always take refuge in the fact that these “branching streets” are not meant to be walked alone. Of all the choices our goal-directed behaviors will lead to, perhaps the most important will be the choice of keeping a good set of peers by our side. 

"Friendship is unnecessary... It has no survival value; rather it gives value to survival." ~C.S. Lewis

References

Chun, M. M. & Turk-Browne, N. B. (2007). Interactions between attention and memory. Current Opinion in Neurobiology,17, 177-184.

De Guzman, K., Molina, T., Orbe, D., & Rivera, L. (2012). Effects of the type of image and the type of color background on choice blindness. Unpublished manuscript.

Goldstein, E. B. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). CA: Wadsworth.

Johansson, P., Hall, L. & Sikstrom, S. (2008). From change blindness to choice blindness. Psychologia, 51, 142-155.

Johannson, P., Hall, L., Sikstrom, S. & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310, 116-119.