Say someone purchases an item and is disappointed with it, but ends up defending it anyways to save face or to convince themselves that it was actually a good purchase. What fallacy would this be? Is it an extension of the sunk cost fallacy? Or something else?
sweet lemons perhaps?
Well, there’s post-purchase rationalization. I would have thought the precise name of any fallacies involved would change depending on the kind of arguments/self assuring logic the individual uses to rationalize a poorly-thought-out purchase.
Sounds like cognitive dissonance to me, but that’s just a WAG.
J.
I can’t think of a specific named fallacy or trope that would apply - I’m sure some socioec prof out there has invented a definition and term, though.
I think you might have the reasoning backwards, though. If you’re thinking of the really egregious cases where someone buys an expensive item that falls short of expectations and then vigorously defends it, that’s one thing.
I think it may be a much more frequent occurrence than that; people tend to defend everything they buy and every dollar they spend as representing rational, considered actions, even though the reverse is probably true. (That is, people tend to spend money for every wrong reason, with few purchases really well considered.) It’s a rarer thing to make an issue of a poor purchase.
A fallacy (at least in the sense in which fallacies have names or types, and are not simply false beliefs) is a flaw in an argument. You have not presented us with any argument, so there is no fallacy. The defense that your hypothetical person makes might or might not contain a fallacy, but more likely it will simply be based upon one or more premises that they know to be false.
Not everything that people do that is foolish or wrong is foolish or wrong because a fallacy has been committed. Actually, it is probably rather rare for a fallacy to be responsible for such behavior.
I think that’s right - I’m a smart consumer who makes good choices - I decided to buy this thing - therefore it must have been a good choice.
Yes, that was my immediate first thought too. Cognitive dissonance.
And now, to contribute something to this thread beyond simply agreeing with an earlier post, I’ll give a few lynx:
Cognitive Dissonance In Psychology: Definition and Examples (Included Dilbert cartoon featuring Dogbert!)
Cognitive Dissonance: Definition and Examples
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/10/19/fighting-cognitive-dissonance-the-lies-we-tell-ourselves/
Cognitive dissonance might be a very general term that applies, but I don’t think it explains very much; it just assigns a fancier term to the situation. “My head hurts”
“Ah, you have a headache - you might even have a migraine!”
There’s also a disconnect between the logical validity of your statements and the likely falsity of the premise.
“Cognitive dissonance” is an explanation, not just a fancier term.
I’m not so sure that the example in the OP necessarily is a fallacy. It depends on exactly what argument was made. The argument might be that although I am disappointed with the product’s feature A which was the most important feature to me pre-purchase , I am very happy with feature B and I have decided post-purchase that B is far more important than A. It’s most likely a rationalization, but there’s no logical fallacy that I can see.
There’s the endowment effect, also known as divestment aversion or ownership bias.
It’s means that people value things more once they gain ownership of them.
The passage you quote directly contradicts that:
To call something “cognitive dissonance” is to describe (or just name) a feeling, not to explain it, or anything else (although one might then proceed to try to explain why one feels it, or to use the concept in an explanation of some behavior).
It absolutely isn’t, as I already pointed out, and none of the explanatory terms people have proposed in this thread, including “cognitive dissonance”, are fallacies either. The person described by the OP might, possibly, be committing a fallacy in the way they rationalize their behavior to themselves, but they equally well might not be. We are not given given nearly enough detail to be able to tell.
The only fallacy going on around here lies in the OP’s apparent belief that all irrationality involves committing a fallacy. (Or, more likely, the OP just does not know what “fallacy” means.)
In this case, I disagree. At best, it’s saying “he made a mistake” when that’s such a general statement that a thousand different kinds of actions might be included. Yes, it could be said that knowing something is trash and defending it as gold is an example of cognitive dissonance, but pasting the label on it doesn’t go an inch towards actually addressing the problem.