On making the right choice: A meta-analysis and large-scale replication attempt of the unconscious thought advantage (original) (raw)
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Judgment and decision making
According to the deliberation without attention (DWA) hypothesis, people facing a difficult choice will make a better decision after a period of distraction than after an equally long period of conscious deliberation, an effect referred to as the unconscious thought advantage (UTA). The status of the DWA hypothesis is controversial, as many studies have tried but failed to replicate the UTA. Here, we report a series of experiments that sought to identify the conditions under which the UTA can be replicated. Our starting point was a recent meta-analysis that identified the conditions under which the UTA was strongest in previous studies. Using a within-subjects design and a task that met each of these conditions, we failed to replicate the UTA. Based on closer inspection of previous methods and findings, we then examined some additional factors that could be important for replicating the UTA, including mental fatigue and choice complexity. This was to no avail, as the results reveale...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Testing the Advantages of Conscious vs. Unconscious Thought for Complex Decisions in a Distraction Free Paradigm * In this study we test predictions from Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) that unconscious thought will lead to better decision making in complex decision tasks relative to conscious thought. Different from prior work testing this prediction, we use a method of manipulating conscious and unconscious thinking that is free from distraction. Specifically, we use a 3-week protocol to experimentally induce adverse sleep and circadian states, both of which should reduce deliberative, conscious thinking and therefore increase the relative importance of more automatic unconscious processes. Our findings fail to support UTT predictions and instead coalesce with other replication attempts that cast doubt on the superiority of unconscious processing in complex decision making.
Does unconscious thought improve complex decision making?
Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 2009
In a recent study, Dijksterhuis et al. (Science 311:1005, 2006) reported that participants were better at solving complex decisions after a period of unconscious thought relative to a period of conscious thought. They interpreted their results as an existence proof of powerful unconscious deliberation mechanisms. In the present report, we used a similar experimental design with an additional control, immediate condition, and we observed that participants produced as good (and even descriptively better) decisions in this condition than in the "unconscious" one, hence challenging the initial interpretation of the authors. However, we still obtained lower performances in the "conscious" relative to the "immediate" condition, suggesting that the initial result of Dijksterhuis et al. was not due to the action of powerful unconscious thought processes, but to the apparent disadvantage of further conscious processing. We provide an explanation for this observation on the basis of current models of decision making. It is Wnally concluded that the beneWt of unconscious thought in complex decision making is still a controversial issue that should be considered cautiously.
Unconscious influences of, not just on, decision-making
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2014
To what extent do we know our own minds when making decisions? Variants of this question have preoccupied researchers in a wide range of domains, from mainstream experimental psychology (cognition, perception, social behavior) to cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics. A pervasive view places a heavy explanatory burden on an intelligent cognitive unconscious, with many theories assigning causally effective roles to unconscious influences. This article presents a novel framework for evaluating these claims and reviews evidence from three major bodies of research in which unconscious factors have been studied: multiple-cue judgment, deliberation without attention, and decisions under uncertainty. Studies of priming (subliminal and primes-to-behavior) and the role of awareness in movement and perception (e.g., timing of willed actions, blindsight) are also given brief consideration. The review highlights that inadequate procedures for assessing awareness, failures to consider artifactual explanations of "landmark" results, and a tendency to uncritically accept conclusions that fit with our intuitions have all contributed to unconscious influences being ascribed inflated and erroneous explanatory power in theories of decision making. The review concludes by recommending that future research should focus on tasks in which participants' attention is diverted away from the experimenter's hypothesis, rather than the highly reflective tasks that are currently often employed.
Boundary conditions on unconscious thought in complex decision making
2008
Should individuals delegate thinking about complex choice problems to the unconscious? We tested two boundary conditions on this suggestion. First, we found that in a decision environment similar to those studied previously, self-paced conscious thought and unconscious thought had similar advantages over conscious thought constrained to a long fixed time interval in terms of identifying the option with the highest number of positive outcomes. Second, we found that self-paced conscious thought performed better than unconscious thought in a second decision environment where performance depended to a greater extent on magnitudes of the attributes. Thus, we argue that it is critical to take into account the interaction of forms of processing with task demands (choice environments) when considering how to approach complex choice problems.
Expertise Effects on Immediate, Deliberate and Unconscious Thought in Complex Decision Making
In this study we examined the claim that unconscious thought would lead to better choices in complex decision making than immediate and deliberate thought. We doubted whether this would also be true for experts in a domain. Participants were students and experienced real-estate agents with expertise in choosing between houses. In three problems, differing in difficulty and/or task requirements, participants decided upon the best house by rank-ordering and evaluation. No support was found for beneficial effects of unconscious thought, neither for experts, nor for students. In line with our hypothesis we found that experts could take advantage of deliberate thinking in complex decision making. They were also better than students in immediate choices. These results corroborate other studies that question the generalizability of the deliberation-without-attention hypothesis, and provide further evidence that it is helpful to deliberately think when making complex decisions. The advice is to rely on experts or to build expertise, instead of leaving thinking to the unconsciousness.
Driven to Distraction: The Impact of Distracter Type on Unconscious Decision Making
while there is a variety of wonderful ways to take a break from work, is there a type of distraction that is actually more productive? studies on the deliberation-without-attention effect show that a period of distraction while making complex decisions can actually lead to better decisions than a period of conscious deliberation. Although there are a number of activities that will distract participants from decision-making tasks, we investigated if certain types of distracter tasks are better for demonstrating the deliberation-without-attention effect. since most people realistically take a break with undemanding forms of activity, we hypothesized that undemanding distracter tasks will yield the best results. in experiment 1, participants were given a choice between four different cars but before they made their decision they instructed (1) to think consciously about the choices, (2) listen to their own music with a portable digital music player, (3) solve an anagram puzzle, (4) solve a word search puzzle, or (5) just make a decision immediately. in experiment 2, participants were given a choice among four different applicants for a hypothetical graduate school program and were instructed (1) to think consciously about the applicants, (2) to engage in a listening task with music, or (3) to just listen to the music. As predicted, the participants who were distracted with the easier tasks (listening to music and word search puzzles) made the best decision significantly more often than conscious thinkers and even outperformed participants distracted with more difficult tasks.
The Impact of the Mode of Thought in Complex Decisions: Intuitive Decisions are Better
Frontiers in Psychology, 2011
A number of recent studies have reported that decision quality is enhanced under conditions of inattention or distraction (unconscious thought;. These reports have generated considerable controversy, for both experimental (problems of replication) and theoretical reasons (interpretation). Here we report the results of four experiments. The first experiment replicates the unconscious thought effect, under conditions that validate and control the subjective criterion of decision quality. The second and third experiments examine the impact of a mode of thought manipulation (without distraction) on decision quality in immediate decisions. Here we find that intuitive or affective manipulations improve decision quality compared to analytic/deliberation manipulations. The fourth experiment combines the two methods (distraction and mode of thought manipulations) and demonstrates enhanced decision quality, in a situation that attempts to preserve ecological validity. The results are interpreted within a framework that is based on two interacting subsystems of decisionmaking: an affective/intuition based system and an analytic/deliberation system.
On Unconscious Morality: The Effects of Unconscious Thinking on Moral Decision Making
Social Cognition, 2010
In this article, we argue that when making moral decisions, unconscious thought can lead to more utilitarian moral decisions (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences), compared to conscious thought and immediate decision making. Therefore, we presented participants with a complex version of the well-known footbridge dilemma. In immediate decision conditions, participants made decisions what to do in this dilemma immediately. In conscious thought conditions, participants consciously thought about what to do for 3 minutes and then made their decisions. In unconscious thought conditions, participants were distracted for 3 minutes, and next made their decisions. As expected, participants who thought unconsciously about the dilemma were more willing to make utilitarian decisions than participants who thought consciously or who made an immediate decision. The current findings provide a new perspective on the social psychology of moral decision making and further insight into unconscious thinking.