Why do people feel the need to make changes to a solution presented by another person?

Question

There is an interesting phenomenon I have come across several times when working with groups, and that is the need some people have to make changes to a solution that someone else created.

The change is often superficial or doesn't substantively change the solution, however the person making the suggestion is often adamant that the change is vital.

In a question on the User Experience SE, some comments were made about how to plan for and mitigate this:

People are natural complainers. So next time you present a design make sure there are 1 or more subtle defects you're sure they notice. They'll complain about those, you say ok and fix them. if you present a perfect design, they'll still find stuff regardless.

And:

That reminds me of the Battle Chess duck - It was well known that producers had to make a change to everything that was done. The artist working on the queen animations came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation. Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. His comments, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."

Is this a known phenomena in Cognitive Sciences?

It seems to indicate a need/desire on the part of the person making the suggestion to exert some control over an external process but I wonder if it is more elemental/basic than that?

Answer 1

I would suggest to split in two. First case is when adviser and advisee(is there usch a word) are socially related in some way. Then the advisee would alter the solution to switch his and adviser's minds from command mode to cooperation mode. And your boss will probably will make bigger changes to switch to "cooperation but I am still boss" mode. We do not like command mode. Even when one friends want's to get rid of another because feeling sleepy they both will try to avoid anyone commanding other explicitly or implicitly so conversation might turn into (seemingly) weird sequence of turning order into cooperation.

Other case is when you read an advice in the old book for example. No social relation but you might still want to alter the advice, even if it suits you perfectly. This might be explained by mnemonics reasons. Basically to remember the advice better or to understand it better. Though we use same words, the association tree(or graph) of those words in our mind is unique for everyone. So small to-fit-better adjustements seem quite natural. Maybe it also has to do with "contact establishment". Like when you sit at someone's computer the first thing you do, move the keyboard and a mouse, and sometmies even a monitor, even though they might be perfectly positioned otherwise. Contact establishment, mnemonics and mind fitting, I think are very close or maybe just the same thing on brainwaves level.

All above is no reference, plain fantasy of a single person.