Citation

Jarcho JM, Berkman ET, Lieberman MD. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2011; 6(4): 460-467.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90025, USA or Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA. lieber@ucla.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/scan/nsq054

PMID

20621961

PMCID

PMC3150852

Abstract

People rationalize the choices they make when confronted with difficult decisions by claiming they never wanted the option they did not choose. Behavioral studies on cognitive dissonance provide evidence for decision-induced attitude change, but these studies cannot fully uncover the mechanisms driving the attitude change because only pre- and post-decision attitudes are measured, rather than the process of change itself. In the first fMRI study to examine the decision phase in a decision-based cognitive dissonance paradigm, we observed that increased activity in right-inferior frontal gyrus, medial fronto-parietal regions and ventral striatum, and decreased activity in anterior insula were associated with subsequent decision-related attitude change. These findings suggest the characteristic rationalization processes that are associated with decision-making may be engaged very quickly at the moment of the decision, without extended deliberation and may involve reappraisal-like emotion regulation processes.

Language: en