The Choice Blindness Lab
The Lab
Alumni
About the lab
We’re a research lab at Lund University Cognitive Science that studies questions concerning the role of external feedback for cognitive processes ranging from preferences and attitudes to emotion and speech production. The lab uses a variety of experimental methods, including magical self-transforming surveys, real-time speech exchange, and gaze-contingent manipulation of decision times. The primary tool of the lab, from which it also gathers its name, is the Choice Blindness paradigm.
Choice Blindness
Choice Blindness is a research paradigm originally inspired by techniques from the domain of close-up card-magic, which permits us to manipulate the relationship between what people choose, and what they actually get. We have investigated choice blindness in domains such as aesthetic-, moral-, political- and consumer choice, and in the modalities of vision, voice, taste and smell, and we have consistently found that participants often fail to notice mismatches between what they choose and what they get. In addition, we have found that participants often confabulate arguments why they actually prefer the alternative they had initially rejected.