[2] Research indicates that the process of making and remembering choices yields memories that tend to be distorted in predictable ways.
These biases may be stored as memories, which are attributions that we make about our mental experiences based on their subjective qualities, our prior knowledge and beliefs, our motives and goals, and the social context.
True and false memories arise by the same mechanism because when the brain processes and stores information, it cannot tell the difference where they came from.
[6][2][7] It is also possible that choice-supportive memories arise because an individual is only paying attention to certain pieces of information when making a decision or to post-choice cognitive dissonance.
[5] In addition, biases can also arise because they are closely related to the high level cognitive operations and complex social interactions.
[8] Memory distortions may sometimes serve a purpose because it may be in our interest to not remember some details of an event or to forget others altogether.
[8] False memory in the context of choice-supportive biases is when items that were not part of the original decision are remembered as being presented.
This type of bias means that falsely remembered events can affect future attitudes and possibly decision-making.
[17] The alignment process enables a person to draw similarities and difference which impact their choice-supportive biases.
Research to support this can be displayed by the following example: when given a choice between two brands of popcorn, participants were more likely to choose the one with the superior alignable differences, such as "pops in its own bag" compared with "requires a microwaveable bowl" than the one with superior non-alignable differences, such as "not likely to burn" compared with those containing "some citric acid"[17][18] The extent of the delay between encoding is a potential factor that could affect choice-supportive bias.
Whereas other researchers have shown that a 2-day delay between making choices and assessment of memory resulted in reasonably high (86%) recognition accuracy.
[12] As a result, people's memories are biased in favour of the option they thought they had selected rather than their actual choices.
[1] For example, it has been observed by correlations that people with better performance in tests of frontal or executive functioning were less prone to choice-supportive memory.
Regret for options not taken can cast a shadow, whereas satisfaction at having made the right choice can make a good outcome seem even better.
[21] Emotional arousal, usually fear based, activates the amygdala and results in the modulation of memory storage occurring in other brain regions.
A PET scan or fMRI can be used to identify different regions of the brain that are activated during specific memory retrieval.
Frontal regions help people encode or use specific memorial attributes to make source judgments, controls personality and the ability to plan for events.
Studies have shown that when younger adults are encouraged to remember the emotional aspect of a choice, they are more likely to show choice-supportive bias.
This may be related to older adults' greater tendency to show a positivity effect in memory.
This may be because older adults remember (or rely on) fewer source identifying characteristics than the young.
A number of studies suggest that using stereotypes or general knowledge to help remember an event is less cognitively demanding than relying on other types of memorial information and thus might require less reflective activity.
Henkel and Mather tested the role of beliefs at the time of retrieval about which option was chosen by giving participants several hypothetical choices like deciding between two used cars.
The relation between accuracy and distortion of autobiographical memory content was examined by verifying 3,220 high school grades recalled by 99 freshman college students.
[20] It was shown that most errors inflated the actual high school grade, meaning that these distortions are attributed to memory reconstructions in a positive and emotionally gratifying direction.
In addition, their findings indicate that the process of distortion does not cause the actual unpleasant memory loss of getting the bad grade.
Incorrect 'yes' responses to critical lures, often referred to as false memories, are remarkably high under standard DRM conditions.
Within the context of cognitive dissonance, choice-supportive bias would be seen as reducing the conflict between "I prefer X" and "I have committed to Y".
A study of the Lady Macbeth effect showed reduced choice-supportive bias by having participants engage in washing.