'Lay rationalism' is the tendency for people to choose options with higher objective value rather than with higher subjective satisfaction because they want to make rational choices and justify those choices to themselves and to others(Hsee, 1999). Th...
'Lay rationalism' is the tendency for people to choose options with higher objective value rather than with higher subjective satisfaction because they want to make rational choices and justify those choices to themselves and to others(Hsee, 1999). This study examined whether perceiving oneself through a first-person perspective or a third-person perspective affects the tendency for a lay rationalism. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions to be primed to perceive themselves either through a first-person perspective or a third-person perspective. Then, half of the participants were asked to predict which options would make them subjectively more satisfied, and the other half were asked which options they would actually choose. The results show that the third-person perspective group showed a more prominent tendency for lay rationalism than the first-person perspective group. Perceiving oneself through a third-person perspective relative to through a first-person perspective, motivates one to justify one's behavior to other people, and accordingly choose an option based on its objective value rather than their subjective satisfaction. Also, individual differences in levels of subjective well-being affected in different ways by priming first- and third-person perspectives. In other words, first-person perspective priming showed a greater effect on people with high levels of subjective well-being. On the other hand, third-person perspective priming had a greater effect on people with low levels of subjective well-being.