Why did you hire her?

We are entirely unaware of the emotional reasons behind our decisions

Researchers constructed a variety of files on candidates for a job posting, systematically varying all their details and asked volunteers to make hiring recommendations.

All details were shuffled: Grade point average, educational level, experience, personal details like physical attractiveness, having been in a car accident, or having spilled coffee on the interviewer’s desk during the interview.

When asked for the factors driving their hiring recommendations, the #1 reported factor was GPA
When statistically analyzed, the #1 factor that drove hiring recommendations was the irrelevant coffee-spilling incident, which is known to make people more likable to us.

Conclusion: Our conscious minds explain our behavior by confabulating “plausible stories” that are governed by social norms. We don’t have conscious access to the true emotional causes.