You don't know why you do what you do

An experiment about the reasons we invent.

People were shown four pairs of stockings laid out on a table, and asked to pick the best pair.

They examined them, compared them, and chose. Then the researchers asked a simple question. Why that one?

People gave confident answers. The texture. The sheerness. The quality. The colour.

There was one problem. The four pairs were identical.

They were the exact same stockings. There was no real difference to choose between.

What actually drove the choice was position. People strongly favoured the pair on the right, a known quirk of how we scan a row of options.

But not one person said "I picked it because it was on the right." When that explanation was offered to them, they denied it, sometimes with a look of mild concern for the questioner.

They did not know the real reason. So their mind quietly made one up, and handed it over with total confidence.

This is confabulation, and it is not a flaw in a few odd people. It is how minds work.

We make a decision for reasons we cannot see, then we generate a story that sounds good, and we believe the story.

The implication is everywhere. The reasons you give for your opinions, your purchases, your attractions, your votes, some are real. And some are stories your mind wrote after the fact to explain a choice it had already made.

You are not lying when you do this. You genuinely believe your reasons. That is what makes it so hard to catch.

You cannot switch this off. But you can hold your "because" a little more loosely.

The next time you are certain you know exactly why you think something, consider that the real reason might be sitting just out of view, and the explanation might be a story you told yourself.

We are unknown to ourselves.

Friedrich Nietzsche.