At http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/science/06tier.html you can read about a famous psychological experiment:

"Once a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M’s — say, red, blue and green — he was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue."

In fact he rejected blue over 65% of the time. Way above the 50% the psychologists had expected if there was not such a thing as Cognitive Dissonance.

Without Googling this experiment, how can we interpret this result? Does the brain think lesser of something when it has been rejected once? Does it rather choose new over old? Can we interpret the result in any other way?

/Tomas

One other way to interpret the result could be that when faced with three items, the monkey does not actively choose, but rather picks at random because the noise of three items is too great for any discriminatory action to take place. He just picks at random. However, when faced with two items, he actively can bring his powers of discrimination into action.

I don't think this explanation is true, but I think it fulfills your criteria.

You might be on the right track, but I don't see you writing the actual solution. It's very probable that the three objects have a rating order in the monkey's mind. Then the experiment starts.

/Tomas

Reminds me of the famous ice cream stand experiment...

When given too many options, potential customers instead chose to do nothing and just walk by.

But when presented only a limited choice (say 3), they were able to quickly make a decision and business was much improved.

Merchandisers have a lot of knowledge in this area, as Philemon points out.

I'll try to write the question a bit shorter:

If a population that is shown to choose A over B also choose C over B 2/3 of the time, what conclusion can we draw from that result?

/Tomas

None ?...

Nir is correct. Or rather, this result can't be used as a proof of Cognitive Dissonance. 2/3 is simply not enough even though it's way above the 50% the psycologists expected if the ordering was random. Why?

/Tomas

If I say that this is similar to the Monty Hall problem, can you show the error in the experiment?

What's interesting and a bit strange is that there have been hundreds of experiments on Cognitive Dissonance since 1956 with the same flaw before the error was pointed out recently.

/Tomas