Predecisional Information Distortion and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Early Preferences in Choice

Abstract

When a decision maker begins to favor a particular choice option, this tentative preference often shifts the evaluation of subsequent information in a manner that benefits the early leader. This ubiquitous bias, called predecisional information distortion, can create a form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which the decision maker is especially likely to choose the initially preferred option. Recent evidence has indicated that information distortion occurs in risky choices as well as riskless choices, that distortion also occurs in choices with more than two options, and that distortion can both enhance the leading option and degrade the trailing option(s). The effects of information distortion on choice and related variables are often sizable and cannot be attributed to individual differences in people’s “undistorted” assessments of the information. Although several issues are not yet resolved, incorporating information distortion into theories and models of the choice process should be a high priority for decision science.