Imagine that you are sitting in front of your computer buying a ticket to go on a trip to a destination in Europe when, suddenly, the phone rings. After answering the call, when you resume the purchase, your choice will most likely change. This is the conclusion that Wendy Liu and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles have reached after examining the effects of interruptions on decision-making. His work is of special interest considering that, in today's world, suffering constant interruptions is the order of the day.
" This work shows that people's decisions are, above all, the result of processing a series of concepts and data, rather than a simple reflection of their innate preferences and dislikes ," Liu stresses. That is why if something interrupts the thought process, it also usually makes us change our mind.
In his experiments, Liu found that, after a pause in processing decisions, when we return to them we do so in a more selective and organized way, usually paying more attention than before to quality, satisfaction and attractiveness, while giving less importance to price and viability. Details of the work are published in the Journal of Consumer Research .
