Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

There have been several demonstrations of constructive influences from choice paradigms, for example, when a decisionmaker has to commit to one of the available options and abandon the rest. In such cases, an expectation of constructiveinfluences, whereby the preference for the chosen option increases, while the preference for the abandoned ones decreases,is perhaps reasonable (e.g., as a way to reduce cognitive dissonance). However, this reasoning is harder to translateto situations such that there is a simple evaluation. We employ an organizational questionnaire to show that a simpleevaluation of an earlier statement can lead to systematic influences on a later one. Our results generalize our understandingfor when constructive influences may occur. We outline a technical framework for predicting this bias (which we labelevaluation bias), based on quantum theory. Quantum theory is an appropriate framework for modelling constructiveinfluences, because the theory involves a fundamental process of state change when a measurement (evaluation) is made.