Hate Doubling Back On Yourself? Psychologists Have Described A New Bias That May Explain Why

Imagine you have an important meeting you have to attend. Maybe it’s a date, a job interview, or something else. Regardless, as you’re making your way, you find your preferred route is blocked. You’re faced with a choice: you can take a diversion that will take longer to reach your destination, or you can double back to the start and then take a different, shorter route. It may sound like there is an obvious answer here, but we're willing to bet the idea of doubling back makes you feel uncomfortable, even if it would ultimately save you time. And, if so, there is a psychological reason for it.

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According to a new study, this strange phenomenon is called the “doubling-back aversion”, which is defined as a tendency for an individual to avoid retracing their steps, even if that leads to an easier or faster route. And this weird habit isn’t limited to physical tasks either; it can occur with cognitive tasks as well.

Although this is the first study of its kind, the subject has been explored in the past. Previous work has shown that there is a general reluctance to deviate from the path one is on, which can be understood as part of a status quo bias. This involves people sticking to their chosen option even when alternatives are better. This is because if the decision to change proves to be worse, then people will experience regret. 

In other work, it's been demonstrated that people and non-human species also unwisely persist with a decision due to a “sunk-cost fallacy”, investing more resources into a doomed proposition in the hope that it can be turned around.

The team examining the double-back aversion believe it relates to these other biases, describing them as fitting within a shared “family”.

"I think all of these talk about how people make what could be construed as poor decisions," Kristine Cho of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.

Using this as a background, Cho and colleagues started to theorize which aspects could contribute to someone’s decision to double back on themselves. They eventually focused in on two distinct facets. Firstly, the sense that doubling back erases any progress already made. Secondly, the feeling that doubling back is more costly than carrying on, as it represents “restarting” all over again.

With these facets defined, the team designed and conducted four separate experiments that involved a total of 2,524 participants (undergraduates from the University of California, Berkeley, and people from Amazon Mechanical Turk). 

During their experiments, the researchers measured participants’ doubling-back aversion in both physical and cognitive tasks. In one test, participants used virtual reality to walk a physical path and then double back, while in others, participants generated lists of words beginning with the same letter, and then switched to a different, easier letter after they had started.

Tests 1 and 2 examined whether participants exhibited doubling-back aversion at all. Then, in Tests 3 and 4, the researchers manipulated the tests to determine which of the two predetermined facets of these decisions might contribute more to a person’s resistance – concern over loss of progress or concern over the workload that would come with restarting. 

Participants demonstrated doubling-back aversion in all four tests, and it seems that both facets contribute to their likelihood of avoiding it. Although these results did not surprise the researchers, their magnitude did. For instance, the results of Test 2 demonstrated that of participants in the control condition, who were presented with changing tasks without it being referred to as “doubling back”, 75 percent were happy to accept the change. However, of those who were told this change was “doubling back”, only 25 percent switched to the easier task.

"When I was analyzing these results, I was like, 'Oh, is there a mistake? How can there be such a big difference?'" Cho added.

At the moment, it is not clear why taking a short step back on a path stops people from taking more efficient options to their goals, but it does call for further investigation. Such work could help people make better decisions.

"I do think that these findings, in a grandiose, hopeful sense, can help people make better decisions," Cho explained.

"Sometimes the best way to move forward is taking one step backward, and that's hard for me to admit. According to the studies, it's hard for a lot of people to admit."

The study is published in Psychological Science.