Editing Cognitive dissonance (section)

=== Free choice===
In the study ''Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives'' (1956) 225 female students rated domestic appliances and then were asked to choose one of two appliances as a gift. The results of the second round of ratings indicated that the women students increased their ratings of the domestic appliance they had selected as a gift and decreased their ratings of the appliances they rejected.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Brehm JW | title = Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives | journal = Journal of Abnormal Psychology | volume = 52 | issue = 3 | pages = 384–389 | date = May 1956 | pmid = 13318848 | doi = 10.1037/h0041006 | s2cid = 8764837 }}</ref>

This type of cognitive dissonance occurs in a person who is faced with a difficult decision and when the rejected choice may still have desirable characteristics to the chooser. The action of deciding provokes the psychological dissonance consequent to choosing X instead of Y, despite little difference between X and Y; the decision "I chose X" is dissonant with the cognition that "There are some aspects of Y that I like". The study ''Choice-induced Preferences in the Absence of Choice: Evidence from a Blind Two-choice Paradigm with Young Children and Capuchin Monkeys'' (2010) reports similar results in the occurrence of cognitive dissonance in human beings and in animals.<ref name="Egan et al.">{{cite journal | vauthors = Egan LC, Bloom P, Santos LR |title=Choice-induced preferences in the absence of choice: Evidence from a blind two choice paradigm with young children and capuchin monkeys |journal=Journal of Experimental Social Psychology |date=January 2010 |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=204–207 |doi=10.1016/j.jesp.2009.08.014 }}</ref>

''Peer Effects in Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms or Social Preferences?'' (2013) indicated that with internal deliberation, the structuring of decisions among people can influence how a person acts. The study suggested that social preferences and social norms can explain peer effects in decision making. The study observed that choices made by the second participant would influence the first participant's effort to make choices and that inequity aversion, the preference for fairness, is the paramount concern of the participants.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Gächter S, Nosenzo D, Sefton M | title = Peer Effects in Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms or Social Preferences? | journal = Journal of the European Economic Association | volume = 11 | issue = 3 | pages = 548–573 | date = June 2013 | pmid = 28553193 | pmc = 5443401 | doi = 10.1111/jeea.12015 | ssrn = 2010940 }}
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