After choosing between two options, memory quietly rewrites which one was better
Psychologists Mara Mather, Eldar Shafir and Marcia Johnson found that once people choose between two similar options, their memory for each option's original pros and cons shifts to favor the choice made — misremembering the chosen option as having had more good features, and the rejected one as having had more flaws, than was true before deciding. The bias helps explain why people rarely regret decisions as much as the evidence available at the time once suggested they should.