Fantasies may lead to biased decision making: Study

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Researchers at New York University made participants to fantasise about one of three things: a dream vacation, wearing glamorous high heels or making huge money in stock market.

They found that the participants were more prone to focus on the positive aspects than the negative aspects of such an event actually happening. For example, fantasising makes one more likely to focus on how fabulous her calves would look when wearing stilettos, rather than the calluses and bunions that might follow, the researchers said.

The findings, published in journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, have implications for how people get information when they are in the early stages of planning an event, the researchers said, pointing out that this bias may ultimately affect decision making later on.

"Our work suggests that before getting to this point, positive fantasies might lead people to acquire biased information -- to learn more about the pros rather than the cons," study author Heather Barry Kappes said.

"Thus, even if people deliberate very carefully on the information they've acquired, they could still make poor decisions," Kappes was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

After being asked to think about the three scenarios, the participants were given a chance to learn more on the topic, for example, by reading a website describing the positive and negative health consequences of wearing high heels.

The team than compared the subjects' preference for pros versus the cons by, for example, monitoring the amounts of time they spent reading about each. It was found that those who had been given an idealised fantasy scenario, rather than one that included the potential problems, focused more on the positive information about the shoes, the trip or the stock market earnings, than on the negative.

This bias toward the positive was most notable for those who were not serious about pursuing the opportunities, the researchers said.

"Turning away from contradictory information allows idealised fantasies to be enjoyed untarnished, but may lead to shunning potentially helpful resources for decision making," the researchers concluded.