Even when we know what works, we may still choose a different strategy, American psychologists discovered. People tend to rely too much on what worked the last time and opt for the same action, as opposed to following the pattern that was consistently successful.

The psychology of the choice

Ian Krajbich, an associate professor of psychology at the Ohio State University, pointed out that people seem to make decisions in the situation of uncertainty based on their “gut feeling” rather than experience of what really works. However, the gut feeling often simply leads them to pick the variant that worked the last time, Science Daily reported.

To explain it simpler, if the fastest way to get home is usually via Main Street, but yesterday it had a traffic jam and you decided to try Second Street, and arrived to your destination faster than usual, it affects your choice of way the next day. In fact, the psychologists discovered that people would take the option that worked the last time in as many as 80% of cases.

In the experiment, participants were playing a computer game that had certain patterns in which figures appeared on the screen. The participants were able to learn the logic and it was obvious by the movement of the computer mouse, in expectation of the figure to pop up.

In the next stage of the game the patterns were interrupted in 10-40% of cases. In other words, the figures weren’t showing up in places where they should, according to the logic, in 1-4 cases out of 10. But most of the time (60-90% of cases), the logic still would work. But when the pattern was no longer reliable, participants were choosing to follow the logic they had learned only in 20% of cases.

They were still better off following the pattern, but they were making choices usually based on what happened the last time. As the result, they weren’t getting paid for wrong choice and the amount of money they won in the game was lower, as what they would get if following the pattern.

But obviously, once the pattern is no longer reliable, people tend to consider it broken and pick what worked the last time.

It’s an interesting psychological trait, which the researchers didn’t know how to explain. People did know what worked for them most often. They just didn’t use this knowledge.

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