The Psychology of Choice: Why We Get Hooked on “What If” Stories

Have you ever been halfway through a choose your own adventure story and thought, “I should go to bed,” and then immediately thought, “Okay, but I need to see what happens if I pick the other door”?

Same.

As the founder of StoryBytes, I’ve had a front row seat to something really human: we do not just enjoy stories, we enjoy possibilities. We like testing realities. We like peeking around corners. And when a story invites us to steer, even a little, it lights up the part of our brain that says: this matters, pay attention.

That is the heart of interactive fiction. It is not “reading plus buttons.” It is reading that gives you agency, then rewards you with consequence.

Why choices feel so sticky

Here’s an analogy I use a lot: traditional reading is like taking a beautiful train ride. You surrender to the route, you watch the landscape unfold, you trust the conductor.

Interactive fiction is more like hiking a trail with forks in the path. You still get the scenery, you still get the story, but now you are also asking, “Do I take the ridge or the river?” And once you pick, it feels personal. You did not just witness the moment. You participated in it.

There is research behind that feeling. Studies on agency and memory suggest that simply having the opportunity to choose can improve later recall, even when the choice itself is not “strategic.” In other words, choice can make experiences more memorable because your brain treats them as yours, not just something that happened in front of you. (See Murty, DuBrow, and Davachi on choice and declarative memory.) (PubMed)

A related line of work reviews how agency can support memory across ages, and it uses a simple everyday comparison: you often remember a route better when you are driving than when you are a passenger. Control changes how we encode experiences. (HARTLEY LAB)

So when an interactive story asks, “Do you trust the stranger?” your brain is not calmly observing. It is simulating. It is committing. It is encoding.

The curiosity itch is real

Another reason “just one more choice” works so well is curiosity. Psychologists have described curiosity as an uncomfortable gap between what you know and what you want to know, like a mental itch you want to scratch. A well known framework calls this the “information gap” idea, and modern neuroscience work discusses it in exactly that drive like way. (PubMed Central)

There is also evidence that curiosity is connected with activity in reward related brain circuitry. A widely cited fMRI study found that higher curiosity was associated with activity in areas linked to anticipated reward while people read trivia questions, and it also showed curiosity can support memory for what you learn. (PubMed)

Interactive fiction is basically a curiosity engine built out of narrative. Each choice point creates a question. Each outcome answers it, and then raises the next one.

Traditional novels absolutely do this too, of course. They do it with chapter endings, reveals, reversals, and page turning momentum.

Interactive stories just do it more frequently, in smaller units, in a way that fits modern time slices.

Why we replay, even when we already know an ending

If you have ever replayed a story just to see the other path, you have met one of the most human cognitive habits we have: counterfactual thinking. That is the brain’s ability to imagine alternatives to reality, the “what if I had done X instead” mode.

Neuroscience work suggests counterfactual thinking overlaps with broader mental simulation systems, the networks we use to re imagine the past and project ourselves into possible futures. (PubMed Central)

Interactive fiction gives that tendency a safe playground. You can explore regret without real consequences. You can test bravery without actual danger. You can try kindness, selfishness, caution, risk, and see what kind of story each version of you creates.

A quick comparison that captures the difference

I try not to make this a “books versus interactive” debate because I genuinely love traditional books. They are the deepest form of long immersion we have.

But if you want a simple way to feel the psychology shift:

• Instead of watching a protagonist choose, you get to choose for yourself.
• Instead of wondering “why did they do that,” you get to test “what would I do.”
• Instead of one fixed emotional arc, you get a handful of alternate arcs you can explore.

That is not “better.” It is just a different kind of engagement.

The design secret: meaningful choices, not endless choices

There is a funny trap here. People love agency, but too many options can backfire. Classic consumer research showed that a smaller set of options can sometimes increase follow through and satisfaction compared to an overwhelming set. (UW Faculty)

At the same time, a large meta analytic review found the overall “choice overload” effect is not universal and depends on context, familiarity, and other factors.

That nuance matters for interactive fiction. The goal is not to throw ten choices at you. The goal is to offer a few options that are all tempting for different reasons, where you can feel the tradeoff without feeling stuck.

That is why many great interactive stories stick to two or three strong options at a time. Enough agency to feel ownership, not so much that you freeze.

Why this scratches the “gaming” itch without losing the “reading” benefits

People often ask me why interactive fiction can feel as sticky as a game. My answer is: games are built around agency, feedback, and consequence. Interactive fiction borrows that structure, but keeps the core experience in language.

You still do the things reading does best: imagining scenes, building vocabulary through context, tracking motivations, noticing tone, sensing pacing. But now, you also get the satisfaction of participation.

It is the difference between hearing a great story around a campfire and being invited to chime in, ask questions, and steer where the storyteller takes the next scene.

A gentle reality check about “addiction”

I like the word “irresistible” more than “addictive,” because there is a huge difference between “this keeps me engaged” and “this is engineered to trap me.”

Interactive fiction can be designed ethically, with natural stopping points and real closure. In fact, one of my favorite things about story based choices is that they can end. They give your brain a clean finish line, not an infinite feed.

Try this the next time you cannot put a story down

Next time you hit a choice point, pause for five seconds and notice what is happening in your head:

Are you predicting outcomes? Are you remembering earlier details to decide? Do you feel a little jolt of anticipation?

That is your brain doing what it is built to do: simulate possibilities, learn from consequences, and turn narrative into something personally meaningful.

And honestly, that is the whole pitch.

If you are going to spend time on a screen anyway, spending some of that time in a story that makes you think, choose, and remember feels like a pretty good deal.

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Sources (clickable)

• Choice can enhance later memory: Murty, DuBrow, Davachi (2015), “The simple act of choosing influences declarative memory” (PubMed) (PubMed)
• Review on agency and memory across development, with examples and mechanisms: Katzman and Hartley (2020), “The value of choice facilitates subsequent memory across development” (PDF) (HARTLEY LAB)
• Curiosity as an information gap and “mental itch” framework in neuroscience context: Kidd and Hayden (2015) (PMC) (PubMed Central)
• Curiosity linked to reward related circuitry and memory effects: Kang et al. (2009) (PubMed) (PubMed)
• Counterfactual thinking and mental simulation networks: Van Hoeck et al. (fMRI, PMC) and review discussion (Frontiers) (PubMed Central)
• Choice overload evidence and nuance: Iyengar and Lepper (2000) and Scheibehenne et al. (2010) meta analysis (UW Faculty)