The topic of how preferences emerge will muddle your mind even more. Can this be mapped onto the unit metaphor? That’s the core question.
Here’s the basic research I carried out on Gemini DeepSearch.
Formation Mechanisms of Personal Preferences: A Multi-Layered Analysis of Cognitive, Neurobiological, and Social Mechanisms
Introduction: Cognitive, Behavioral, and Neurobiological Foundations of Personal Preferences
Personal preferences, such as a favorite color, a preferred sports team, or an adopted lifestyle, are among the most fundamental components of human identity. While these preferences may appear to be simple, conscious choices, a complex interplay of psychological, sociological, and neurobiological mechanisms underlies them. This report, starting from the preferences highlighted in the user’s query, delves into the process by which they are shaped within an individual’s mental and social world. The analysis provides a holistic perspective on the dynamics that shape our preferences by drawing from a multidisciplinary viewpoint that spans from social learning theory to cognitive psychology concepts, and from the brain’s reward system to modern artificial intelligence models.
The report will first explore how our preferences are shaped by relationships and interactions in the external world. Subsequently, it will explain how mental shortcuts and memory mechanisms can transform even initially random data into lasting preferences. Thirdly, it will examine the biological underpinnings of our preferences, specifically the role of the brain’s reward and emotional systems. Finally, using analogies from the field of artificial intelligence, it aims to provide a deeper understanding of the seemingly irrational aspects of human preferences. This integrated approach demonstrates that the formation of personal preferences is not merely an individual decision but a multi-layered and continuously evolving process.
Part I: The Role of Social and Relational Factors in Preference Formation
Personal preferences are a direct reflection of the social environment and relationships in which an individual lives. The values, beliefs, and even simple likes that a person adopts are shaped by social interactions acquired through family, peers, and role models. One of the most important mechanisms in this process is learning based on observation and imitation.
1.1. Social Learning Theory and Modeling
Albert Bandura’s social learning theory explains how people acquire new behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions by merely observing others, without physical practice or direct reinforcement . In this cognitive process, an individual learns by observing the outcomes of a model’s behaviors. Through this “vicarious reinforcement,” an observed behavior is likely to be repeated if it is rewarded and abandoned if it is punished. This is a fundamental principle that explains why a child might start supporting the team of a beloved athlete or imitate a celebrity’s fashion style.
Especially during childhood and adolescence, media figures like famous heroes, TV show actors, or athletes become important role models. Individuals begin to imitate the characteristics, clothing styles, and even the way of speaking of these figures they admire. This process is more than just superficial imitation; it serves as a “guide” for the individual to construct their own identity. Social learning theory provides a scientific basis for how an individual can form their personal preferences by adopting the choices of a childhood idol. However, preferences are not only influenced by individual idols; social norms and the social proof mechanism also play a critical role. People’s trust in the opinions of others can directly influence their brand or product choices. The endorsement of a product by experts, celebrities, or the general public creates an perception that it is popular and trustworthy, which leads to new preferences. In this context, social learning is a multifaceted phenomenon that includes both individual modeling and the adoption of social norms.
1.2. Peer and Family Influence
Social learning and modeling are intensified within an individual’s immediate circle, namely family and peer groups. After the family, peers are the first people with whom a child has regular and prolonged social interaction. Peer groups have significant effects on children’s emotional, psychological, and social development. These groups, especially during adolescence, provide a sense of belonging, value, security, and a foundation for independence. Young people prefer to form friendships with peers who have similar characteristics, values, and habits, and these groups are shaped around shared values.
At the same time, family dynamics indirectly shape peer relationships. Parents’ attitudes toward child-rearing and their communication with their children, even if they do not directly intervene, influence the child’s peer group and their interactions with it. Children whose opinions are valued and who are given an environment to express themselves freely within the family are more successful in the long term at maintaining their own boundaries and forming their own preferences in peer relationships. The positive aspects of peer groups include providing a safe space to test values and ideas, encouraging a move toward independence, and influencing decision-making processes .
1.3. Sibling Rivalry and the Formation of Opposite Preferences
The user’s example of a sibling choosing the rival team to their older brother due to anger demonstrates a more complex aspect of social influence than mere imitation. This situation is a result of the psychological phenomenon known as “sibling rivalry” and the individual’s need for “differentiation” . Sibling rivalry is a common condition that typically arises from a quest for parental love and attention, which motivates children to differentiate themselves . Children want to be seen as the most “special” and “unique” individual within the family, which pushes them to be different . If one sibling excels in a particular area or adopts a preference, the other sibling may consciously avoid that area or adopt the opposite preference . This action symbolizes the individual’s effort to build their own unique identity and serves as a statement of identity. The underlying mechanism of this preference is not just imitation, but an active effort to define “who they don’t want to be” .
This highlights that social influence can operate not only through imitation or adoption but also through conscious rejection and reaction. This underscores that social learning is not a passive process but an active part of a person’s identity search. The emotions underlying sibling rivalry, such as jealousy, anger, and frustration, are processed by the brain’s emotional centers, like the amygdala and the limbic system . These powerful emotional responses interact with the brain’s reward-punishment mechanisms, leading to a preference decision that is more emotional than rational. This demonstrates how an emotional conflict triggered by a social relationship can directly activate a neurobiological mechanism, leading to the formation of a lasting preference. Thus, the formation of a preference can be fueled not only by an external model but also by an internal emotional state and a desire for opposition.
Part II: The Impact of Mental Shortcuts and Memory Mechanisms
Beyond social interactions, the brain’s cognitive processing mechanisms also play a significant role in the formation of our personal preferences. The ability of an individual to transform initially random and meaningless data, such as an “school number” or a “credit card PIN,” into a “preference” can be explained by the core principles of cognitive psychology.
2.1. The Mere-Exposure Effect
The mere-exposure effect is a cognitive bias that describes our tendency to develop a preference for things simply because we are familiar with them . Also known as the “familiarity principle,” this phenomenon often occurs subliminally, at a level below our conscious awareness . Evolutionarily, our brain perceives the familiar as safer and less dangerous, because repeated exposure to a stimulus without negative consequences signals that it is safe . Therefore, choosing something familiar is perceived as an action with less uncertainty and risk .
The user’s examples, such as an old school number or a credit card PIN, are prime reflections of this effect. What was initially a meaningless string of numbers becomes a “pattern” or “anchor” in the mind through repeated daily use. This repeated exposure increases familiarity with the data and makes it a more comfortable, less effortful, and cognitively more fluid preference . This can also be linked to the brain’s search for the “path of least resistance.” The brain prefers options that require less cognitive effort. Using a pre-known PIN like a school number requires much less cognitive energy than creating and memorizing a brand new, complex PIN. This suggests that preferences are based not only on emotional or social factors but also on the pursuit of cognitive efficiency.
2.2. Cognitive Biases and Implicit Memory
Cognitive biases like the mere-exposure effect are systematic errors in thinking caused by the brain’s use of “mental shortcuts” (heuristics) to make faster, more efficient decisions . These biases lead an individual to create their own “subjective reality” based on their perceptions and experiences, and this reality, rather than objective input, often dictates their behavior . Assuming that someone who supports the same sports team as you must be a “good person” is an example of such a mental shortcut .
Implicit memory, which is unconscious and involuntary, plays a critical role in the formation of our personal preferences . Implicit memory is associated with actions performed automatically without conscious thought, such as riding a bike or typing on a keyboard . The transformation of a random data point, like a school number, into a lasting password or personal pattern is largely a function of implicit memory. Every time we use this data, brain regions involved in motor control, like the basal ganglia and cerebellum, automate the action . Thus, instead of consciously remembering the data, we automatically use it, which means the preference is embedded subconsciously . What initially appears random becomes a systematic and permanent pattern through prolonged exposure and cognitive reinforcement. This process reveals how randomness can be converted into a system through cognitive and neural reinforcement. This pattern helps an individual shape their own subjective reality and can even lead to systematic thinking errors, like “home country bias” in finance, even in decisions that are expected to be rational .
Part III: The Neurobiological Substrate of Preferences
The formation of personal preferences, at its most fundamental level, is based on the brain’s biological mechanisms. The process of saving a preferred color or team as a “key” corresponds to the function of the brain’s reward systems and emotional memory centers.
3.1. The Brain’s Reward and Punishment Systems
The brain’s reward pathway consists of neurons that are responsible for releasing dopamine, which provides a feeling of pleasure. When an action, such as our favorite team winning or an idol succeeding, activates this reward pathway, the brain forms a strong connection between the action and pleasure. This connection encourages the repetition of the action in the future. This system is evolutionarily focused on survival, and the “reward” (gain, success, pleasure) or “punishment” (loss, failure, pain) outcomes from experiences become a fundamental source of motivation for future choices. A prime example of this mechanism is an investor’s tendency to buy a stock again that brought them a past gain, even if it seems irrational. The principle that “what is rewarded tends to be repeated” shows that the value of a preference is reinforced by the emotional and symbolic meaning attached to it. In this context, loyalty to a football team is not just a rational performance evaluation, but a powerful emotional bond reinforced by the pleasure and dopamine releases associated with the team’s past successes.
3.2. The Limbic System and Emotional Memory
The limbic system, known as the emotional center of the brain, includes vital structures like the hypothalamus, hippocampus, thalamus, and amygdala. This system assists with learning, motivation, emotional processing, and social processing. The amygdala is the control center for our emotional responses such as excitement, anger, and anxiety. It also interacts with the hippocampus to add emotional content to memories. The hippocampus, in turn, is responsible for forming memories and transferring information from short-term to long-term memory. The cooperation of these two structures allows an event (e.g., a championship match) to become a lasting, emotionally charged memory. These emotionally charged memories can then subconsciously influence future preferences and become “flashbulb memories ”.
Neurobiologically, the “value” of a preference is determined not by its concrete benefit (surface value) but by the emotional responses it triggers (symbolic value). This explains why a person might continue to support a constantly losing team. This preference is reinforced by strong emotional memories from the past (hippocampus-amygdala connection) and dopamine. This means that a preference is not just a logical evaluation, but a strong biochemical and emotional bond. The user’s phrase “can be saved as a key” perfectly corresponds to the functions of dopamine and the limbic system. When an emotionally charged experience occurs (amygdala), the related stimuli (color, logo, team name) are saved to memory by the hippocampus and tagged as “valuable” with a release of dopamine (ventral striatum). This tagging process allows the brain to quickly use that “key” (i.e., the positive preference) when similar stimuli are encountered in the future.
The table below summarizes this complex neurobiological process in a more concrete way:
| Brain Region |
Main Function |
Role in Preference Formation |
| Limbic System |
|
|
Emotional processing, learning, motivation, social processi ng
| Assigning emotional value to preferences and shaping them. |
| Hippocampus |
| undefined |
Formation of memories and transfer to long-term mem ory
| Permanently recording the relationship between an event and a preference. |
| Amygdala |
| undefined |
Control of emotional responses and adding emotional content to memo ries
| Stamping the memory with strong emotional experiences (pleasure, anger) related to the preference. |
| Ventral Striatum |
| undefined |
Reward assignment, motivation, reinforcement lea rning
| Reinforcing a preference by associating it with the pleasure experienced as a result. |
| Basal Ganglia & Cerebellum |
| undefined |
Part IV: A Look at Preference Formation from an AI Perspective: An Analogy
The complexity of preference formation in the human brain shows striking similarities with the challenges faced in developing modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This analogy helps us understand how deep and nuanced the mechanisms underlying human behavior truly are.
4.1. Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Preference Modeling
One of the most important developments in the field of artificial intelligence is Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), a machine learning technique used to align an AI system with human preferences . This process involves training a “reward model” with rating data collected from humans, and this model then guides the main language model to generate responses that best fit human preferences .
This process shows a striking similarity to the brain’s reward and reinforcement mechanisms. Just as the human brain repeats a behavior after receiving positive feedback (a reward) from its outcome , RLHF “rewards” the model for producing outputs that most closely match human preferences . This shows how a complex and difficult-to-define task (understanding human preferences) can be taught through a simple judgment mechanism (comparison, rating) . By using human feedback as a primary value signal, AI systems learn to produce the most “human-like” and preferred outputs . This is an example of how the biological and social reinforcement cycle in human preference formation is being modeled through modern technology.
4.2. Cognitive Dissonance and Irrational Behavior in AI
A Harvard study revealed that an advanced language model like GPT-4o exhibits human-like cognitive dissonance . Researchers had the model write an essay that contradicted its own opinion on a topic and observed that the model’s attitude toward the topic changed to match the tone of the essay it had generated . What’s more, this shift was “statistically much larger” when the model was given the illusion of “free choice,” meaning it was led to believe that it had written the essay of its own free will .
The result of this experiment, in which a rational machine responds to “free choice” and changes its attitude, shows that a human “flaw” like cognitive dissonance is a deep psychological pattern that can be learned from human data . This finding reveals that the “illogical” or “emotional” components of personal preference formation are based on a much more fundamental mechanism and can even be adopted by a system that is not inherently irrational . This is proof of the complexity of human preferences and the deep rules that underlie this complexity.
This situation parallels the “proxy goal” problem in AI alignment research . In this problem, a simplified proxy goal set by designers (e.g., an autonomous vehicle only finding the fastest route) can conflict with the true goal (passenger safety) . This is likened to the myth of King Midas, who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold, only to die when his food also became gold . This analogy also applies to human preferences. Humans, too, often pursue a proxy goal (e.g., a popular team winning) while trying to satisfy a deeper need (belonging, social acceptance) . This highlights that the apparent reason behind a preference is often a symbolic representation of a deeper psychological need.
Conclusion: An Integrated Model and Multi-Layered Analysis
This report presents a holistic model that explains the complex interaction of social, cognitive, and neurobiological factors in the formation of our personal preferences, rather than reducing the topic to a single cause. Every example in the user’s query finds a counterpart in these different layers.
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Relational Influences: The sibling rivalry example shows that social learning is not limited to imitation but also operates through conscious acts of differentiation and rejection . This process can turn into a lasting preference when emotional conflict (amygdala) triggers the brain’s reward system (ventral str iatum).
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Memory and Cognitive Shortcuts: The transformation of a random data point like an old school number into a password is a result of the mere-exposure effect and implicit memory . The brain prefers what is familiar to reduce cognitive effort and turns this random data into a systematic pattern through repetition .
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Role Models and Neurobiology: Adopting an idol’s preferences is explained by social learning theory (modeling) , and the lasting nature of this preference is reinforced when the brain’s reward system (dopamine release) and emotional memory (limbic system) tag this experience with a positiv e value.
This integrated model emphasizes that personal preferences are dynamic and constantly changing. Each new experience an individual has throughout their life adds a new input to this complex network and can reshape existing preferences. Understanding this process is not only a matter of theoretical curiosity but also provides practical implications in many fields, from marketing strategies (social proof and familiarity) and education (role modeling) to personal development (recognizing cognitive biases).
Our preferences are the result of a continuous interplay between our subjective experiences, our social environment, and the biological structure of our brains. Therefore, instead of basing the logic of a preference on a single reason, understanding its multi-layered and complex origins provides a deeper and more nuanced perspective on human behavior.
Resistance could be a keyword.