Habit-like repetition influences decisions more than previously thought

A new study by Dresden University of Technology shows that past actions have a greater impact on current decisions than previously assumed, providing new insights into human decision-making. This finding could enhance our understanding of everyday decisions and habits. The results were published in the renowned journal “Communications Psychology”.

Why do people often make decisions in the same pattern and choose the tried and tested, even when there are apparently better alternatives? A research team led by Stefan Kiebel, Professor of Cognitive Computational Neuroscience at TU Dresden, investigated this question in a large-scale study. To this end, the team examined nine newly collected decision-making tasks and six previously published data sets with a total of over 700 participants to determine how people initially learn values in clearly defined decision-making contexts and which of these learned options they subsequently prefer in newly combined contexts.

"Our study shows that many 'irrational' preferences do not necessarily arise primarily from people storing values relative to other values, but rather from the fact that people tend to repeat actions they once preferred in a particular context. This pure repetition can later lead to a particular option still being preferred in new contexts or environments, even if there are equivalent or even better alternatives," explains lead author Dr Ben Wagner.

The researchers were thus able to prove that people tend to repeat decisions they have already made, regardless of whether these still make sense in the new moment. The decisive factor here is not weighing up the pros and cons, but remembering previous actions. This acts as a mental shortcut and influences the next choice.

“The surprising thing was how strongly repetition alone can change preferences,” explains Wagner. “Options that were chosen more frequently were not only preferred, but also rated as better.”

The results help to better understand seemingly illogical behavior in everyday life, for example in shopping decisions, habits or recurring routines. At the same time, the study provides new starting points for describing decision-making processes more realistically, for example in psychology, behavioral research or in the design of decision-making environments.

Original publication:

Wagner, B.J., Wolf, H.B. & Kiebel, S.J. Action repetition biases choice in context-dependent decision-making. Commun Psychol 3, 177 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-025-00363-x

Contact:
Dr. Ben Wagner
former member of the
Chair of cognitive computational neuroscience
TU Dresden
now:
University Hospital Tübingen and Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
Email:

Prof Dr. Stefan Kiebel
Chair of cognitive computational neuroscience
TU Dresden
Email:
Tel. +49 351 463-43145