Choice perseverance underlies pursuing a hard-to-get target in an avatar choice task.

ABSTRACT: People sometimes persistently pursue hard-to-get targets. Why people pursue such targets is unclear. Here, we hypothesized that choice perseverance, which is the tendency to repeat the same choice independent of the obtained outcomes, leads individuals to repeatedly choose a hard-to-get target, which consequently increases their preference for the target. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted an online experiment involving an avatar choice task in which the participants repeatedly selected one avatar, and the selected avatar expressed their valence reactions through facial expressions and voice. We defined "hard-to-get" and "easy-to-get" avatars by manipulating the outcome probability such that the hard-to-get avatars rarely provided a positive reaction when selected, while the easy

SUBMITTER: Sugawara M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9488557 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature