Image credit: igotmebabe

Last Thursday I stumbled across an article: “Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences and Decisions“. The article described two experiments, the first experiment concerned itself with jam (or more specifically how introspection effects our jam related decision making). During the jam experiment, participants were given the tough task of tasting different brands of strawberry jam. The experimental condition then filled out a questionnaire about why they liked or disliked the jams whilst the control condition filled out a non jam related questionnaire. Both conditions then rated how much they liked/disliked each of the jams. Finally the ratings given by the participants in each condition were compared to the ratings given by a panel of jam experts.