Mental Simulation and The Individual Preference Effect

Purpose - The “Individual Preference Effect” (IPE: Faulmüller et al., 2010; Greitemeyer & Schulz-Hardt, 2003; Greitemeyer et al., 2003), a form of confirmation bias, is an important barrier to achieving improved group decision-making outcomes in Hidden Profile tasks. Group members remain committed to their individual preferences and are unable to disconfirm their initial suboptimal selection decisions, even when presented with full information enabling them to correct them, and even if the accompanying group processes are perfectly conducted. This paper examines whether a mental simulation can overcome the IPE.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Two experimental studies examine the effect of a mental simulation intervention in attenuating the IPE and improving decision quality in an online individual Hidden Profile task.

Findings – Individuals undertaking a mental simulation achieved higher decision quality than those in a Control condition and experienced a greater reduction in confidence in the Suboptimal solution.

Originality – To the authors’ knowledge, no study has examined whether mental simulation can attenuate the IPE.

Research limitations/implications – Results suggest a role for mental simulation in overcoming the IPE. The test environment is an online individual decision-making task and broader application to group decision-making is not tested.

Practical Implications – Since mental simulation is something we all do, it should easily generalise to an organisational setting to improve decision outcomes.