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瑞典研究人员的一项最新研究显示，当人们的要求没有获得满足时，他们甚至无法注意到自己最初的选择和替代品之间的巨大差别。人们常常自己骗自己地认为，替代品就是最初的选择。
据美国“生活科学”网站日前报道，在这项研究过程中，瑞典研究人员向120名志愿者出示了两张不同的女性面部照片。志愿者看照片的时间为2秒钟，之后要在其中选择出他们认为更具有吸引力的一个。研究人员随后会让这些志愿者说明其选择这张照片的原因。
研究人员使用不同的照片对每个志愿者重复进行了15次这样的试验。但是在其中的3次试验中，当志愿者做出选择后，研究人员却秘密地将两张照片进行了调换。
令人惊讶的是，后来当这些志愿者再观看自己所选择的照片时，不仅很多人没有注意到照片被调换了，他们反而还能对为什么选择这张照片做出非常详细的解释。事实上，这张照片其实正是他们原来没有选择的那张。这就好像，你要求得到一个苹果，然而后来却在详细解释为什么想得到替代品香蕉一样。
研究人员将这种现象称为“选择失明”（choice blindness）。
一位男性志愿者对他没有选择的那张照片做出如此详细的解释，他说，“她光芒四射，与另外一个人相比，我更喜欢在酒吧中结识她，我喜欢她配戴的耳环”。同样地，一名女性志愿者也认为她选择的这张照片（实际是落选的那张）看起来要比另外一张让人觉得舒服得多。
瑞典隆德大学的研究人员拉斯·霍尔认为，那些志愿者在解释自己的选择理由时都是真心实意且非常诚恳的，不知为何他们并没有发觉照片被调换了。霍尔认为，在此“虚谈症”（Confabulation）或许是一个可以使用的合适术语。
试验完成之后，研究人员又向志愿者提出了一个“假设”情节：假设在他们参与的一次试验中，两张照片被调换了。他们能注意到么？
对于这个问题，志愿者们又给出了让人出乎意料的答案。其中84％的人认为，他们能注意到照片被调换。当研究人员对这些志愿者以实相告时，很多人都感到非常惊讶甚至还有怀疑。
对此，研究人员把这种现象称为“选择失明的失明”（choice blindness blindness）。
研究人员目前尚不明确为什么会发生“选择失明”，同时也不清楚它是如何发生的。但他们认为这和我们如何做决定具有实质性联系。一些关于决策产生的流行理论认为，当选择结果发生变化时，人们多会注意到这一点。而这项最新的研究结果却告诉人们，事实并非总是如此。因此研究人员也认为，“意向”这个词的概念需要重新评估和更精确的审视。
研究者指出，“选择失明”的试验也可以向人们提供对主观性和自省问题的研究方法。这两个问题曾被很多科学家认为研究起来非常困难，甚至是不可能按科学方法去评价的。
Do you always get what you ask for? A new study finds that when you don't, you might not even notice the difference.
Swedish researchers showed a pair of female faces to 120 volunteers for 2 seconds and then asked them to choose which one they thought was more attractive. The researchers then asked the volunteers to explain their choice.
The trial was repeated 15 times for each volunteer, using different pairs of faces. but in three of the trials the faces were secretly switched after a decision had been made.
Surprisingly, not only were a large number of the volunteers oblivious to the switch when ultimately allowed to take a longer look at their choice, they were actually able to gave detailed explanations for why they preferred the face that, indeed, they had actually rejected.
It would be asking for an apple and then explaining exactly why you wanted the banana you got instead.
The researchers call the phenomenon "choice blindness."
"She's radiant," gushed one male volunteer about a face he didn't choose. "I would rather have approached her at a bar than the other one. I like earrings!"
Another female volunteer said that the face she chose (which in fact she hadn't) looked nicer than the other.
Lars Hall, a researcher from Lund University, thinks the volunteers were sincere when giving their reports and somehow failed to notice the switch.
"Confabulation' is perhaps a safe term to use," Hall said in an email interview. "That is, the [false] reports were constructed after the fact."
After the experiment, the volunteers were presented with a "hypothetical" scenario: Suppose they were involved in an experiment where the faces you chose were switched.
Eighty-four percent of the volunteers said they would. The researchers called this "choice blindness blindness." When the volunteers were told the truth about how they had been duped, many expressed surprise and even disbelief.
The researchers don't yet know how or why choice blindness occurs, but they think it gets to the very heart of how we make decisions. Some of the most popular theories about decision-making assume that people will notice when their choices and the outcomes of those choices don't line up.
"But as our experiment shows, this is not always the case," Hall told LiveScience.
"Therefore the concept of 'intention' needs to be reevaluated and scrutinized more closely."
Choice blindness experiments may also provide a way to study subjectivity and introspection, topics once considered by many scientists to be extremely difficult or even impossible to evaluate scientifically.
"If someone insists on knowing their own mind, it is very difficult to progress beyond this point," Hall said. "[But] by using choice blindness we can create a very particular —and very strange—situation in which we actually can say that someone is wrong despite the fact that they might vehemently claim to know their own mind."
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