Nick Chater, "The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain" (Yale UP, 2019)
New Books in Psychology
We Create Stories to Justify Choices, Even Incorrect Ones
People often confabulate reasons for their decisions even when presented with incorrect choices. In an experiment, participants were tricked into selecting a face they did not originally prefer, and when asked to explain their choice, they provided rationalizations that were not only inaccurate but sometimes opposed to their true preferences. This behavior suggests that individuals are capable of fabricating plausible justifications for their opinions or decisions without realizing they are constructing a narrative to fit the situation, instead of recounting actual thought processes or memories. The phenomenon highlights the disconnect between perceived reasoning and actual decision-making, revealing an inherent flaw in self-understanding and reflection.
