Preference-driven biases in decision makers' information search and evaluation

While it is well established that the search for information after a decision is biased toward supporting that decision,the case of preference-supporting search before the decision remains open. three studies of consumer choices consistently found a complete absence of a pre-choice bias toward searching for preference-supporting information. the absence of this confirming search bias occurred for products that were both hedonic and utilitarian,both expensive and inexpensive,and both high and low in expected brand loyalty. experiment 3 also verified the presence of the expected post-choice search bias to support the chosen alternative. therefore the absence of a pre-choice search bias in all three studies was not likely to be due to our using a method that was so insensitive that a search bias would not be observed under any circumstances. in addition to the absence of an effect of prior preferences on information selection,subjects' self-reported search strategies exhibited a clear tendency toward a balance of positive and negative information. across the three studies,we also tested for the presence of a preference-supporting bias in the evaluation of the information acquired in the search process. this evaluation bias was found both pre- and post-choice. © 2013. the authors license this article under the terms of the creative commons attribution 3.0 license.