9. Choice Blindness: What do we Really Want?
We are continuing our list of winning science fair projects for high school with this experiment that is very interesting as it deals with the phenomenon that is choice blindness or situations where people are blind to their own choices and they can actually confirm decisions they didn’t make. This experiment’s goal is to determine whether choice blindness occurs more often with men or women. For this science project, it is necessary to find 30 people to participate in the experiment and to have about 20 photos of non-famous male persons, and 20 photos of non-famous female persons. Two photos should be presented to a female subject asking her which one does she find more attractive. Then show her the photos he has chosen and ask her why did she choose that one. After repeating these steps several times, in three of the trials, you need to show a different photo to the subject and not the one she actually chose. Ask her why did she choose that one and observe whether she notices that she actually didn’t. Repeat the same process with male subjects and pay attention to how they react when you show them a photo they didn’t choose. Do they notice it’s a different person? Analyze how many times did you manage to fool female subjects, and then the male subjects.