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Choice blindness: You don't know what you want

By Lars Hall and Petter Johansson

15 April 2009

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New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

When asked to defend a choice, most of us will justify it in great detail – even if our original choice has been covertly exchanged for something else

(Image: Peter Cade/Iconica/Getty)

WE HAVE all heard of experts who fail basic tests of sensory discrimination in their own field: wine snobs who can’t tell red from white wine (albeit in blackened cups), or art critics who see deep meaning in random lines drawn by a computer. We delight in such stories since anyone with pretensions to authority is fair game. But what if…

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