Need help identifying this cognitive bias or fallacy pointed out by Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow
When this event occurs it is known as a failure of "transitivity" of preferences.

Transitive preferences are such that for every  X,Y,Z, if X is preferred to Y and Y is preferred to Z then X must be preferred to Z. 

Economists define rational preferences as binary relations that are complete and transitive, meaning that we can compare everything and the comparisons are consistent.