We lean on how something feels when making a fast judgment.
More quotesHere is an uncomfortable possibility for every focus group: people may be excellent witnesses to what they chose and hopeless witnesses to why.
The hare survives by not possessing a neat little strategy it can accidentally advertise. The broader self-deception argument is a hypothesis, not a permission slip to declare every conscious explanation fraudulent. But it should make researchers much less smug about the answer to “Why did you buy it?”
Ask somebody why they picked the expensive bottle and you may hear about provenance. The heavier glass did some work. Ask why they trust one app and they may praise the interface. Their colleague’s recommendation arrived first. Ask why a candidate felt wrong and the explanation may acquire impressive polish after a five-second gut reaction.
Then comes the corporate magic trick: twenty interviews become six themes; six themes become a strategy; the strategy quotes customers describing mental machinery they cannot directly inspect.
Self-report still matters. People can tell us what they noticed, expected, disliked and remember. They are rather shakier as forensic psychologists of their own behaviour. Split the job. Ask people for their story, but observe their choices. Change the order, price, packaging or default. Compare what they say with what they do. Treat the gap as information, not disobedience.
A customer explanation is evidence. It is not CCTV footage from inside the mind.