Open Access

Michail Kokkoris

• The aim of this thesis is to study how opinion voicing can affect choice at a basic psychological level. Seven experiments lend empirical support to the premise that opinion voicing reconfigures the psychological meaning of choice through two different ways. First, it was argued that the availability of opinion voicing opportunities can undermine choice self-expressiveness and hence reduce post-choice rationalization. Second, it was suggested that the subjective construal of opinionation can reduce preference-choice consistency. As a whole, the overarching idea informing all studies is that opinion voicing reconfigures the psychological function of choice, as studied through well-established effects associated with the relation between preferences and choices through an experimental social psychological perspective. Unlike prior research that has largely focused on the interpersonal influence of expressed opinions on others’ choices, this research proposes an intrapersonal approach. Insofar as opinion and choice are parts of the self-concept, one’s opinions can interact with one’s own choices. In view of groundbreaking technological developments and societal changes that render opinion voicing at once all the more accessible and all the more valued, this research highlights how the proliferation of opportunities to express ourselves through opinions might change the way we relate to our choices, and how different construals of opinion voicing might also affect the extent to which we are driven by our preferences when choosing.