Coherence Shifts in Attribute Evaluations

In five experiments, people repeatedly judged individual options with respect to both overall value and attribute values. When required to choose between two snacks, each differing in two attributes (pleasure and nutrition), people's assessments of value shifted from pre- to post-choice in the direction that spread the alternatives further apart so as to favor the winner, thereby increasing confidence in the choice. This shift was observed not only for ratings of overall value, but also for each of the two individual attributes. The magnitude of the coherence shift increased with choice difficulty as measured by the difference in initial ratings of overall value for the two options, as well as with a measure of attribute disparity (the degree to which individual attributes "disagree" with one another as to which option is superior). In Experiments 2-5, tasks other than explicit choice generated the same qualitative pattern of value changes, confidence, and response time (RT). These findings support the hypothesis that active consideration of options, whether or not explicitly related to value, automatically refines the mental value representations for the options, which in turn allows them to be more precisely distinguished when later included in a value-based choice set.