On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect
Abstract
Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing. On the basis of recent insights into the characteristics of conscious and unconscious thought, we tested the hypothesis that simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results after conscious thought, but that choices in complex matters (such as between different houses or different cars) should be left to unconscious thought. Named the “deliberation-without-attention” hypothesis, it was confirmed in four studies on consumer choice, both in the laboratory as well as among actual shoppers, that purchases of complex products were viewed more favorably when decisions had been made in the absence of attentive deliberation.
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References and Notes
1
It is important to note that attention to the problem at hand is the crucial distinction in our definitions of conscious and unconscious thought. Thinking about buying a new car while attention is directed at possible new cars is conscious thought. Thinking about buying a new car while attention is temporarily directed elsewhere is unconscious thought. This distinction does not mean that conscious thought only comprises conscious processes. One can compare it to speech. Speech is a conscious process (i.e., attention is directed at it while one speaks), but it is in part dependent on accompanying unconscious processes (such as processes responsible for syntax or word choice).
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Quality of decision was operationalized from a normative perspective. One of the choice options was made more desirable than the others because it had been assigned more positive aspects than the other apartments.
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The important distinction between following rules and merely conforming to them (and the need for conscious attention in the former) was made by S. A. Sloman (29).
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Unconscious thought is reminiscent of implicit learning, but there is an important difference. Implicit learning refers to aspects of a task that are learned while working on the task (and that are inaccessible to consciousness). Unconscious thought refers to thought processes that take place after the encoding of relevant information. A good example of this definition of unconscious thought is the groundbreaking work by Stickgold and colleagues on learning during sleep. See, e.g., (30, 31).
25
Materials and methods are available as supporting material on Science Online.
26
We found a correlation between number of aspects and amount of thought (r = 0.54, P < 0.001): The more complex a product is, the more people think consciously when deciding to purchase it. Understandable as this may be, our analysis suggests that people should do the opposite, i.e., think unconsciously when deciding to purchase a complex product. The correlation between number of aspects and price was also significant (r = 0.45, P < 0.001): Expensive products were more complex than inexpensive ones.
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32
We thank E. Neimeijer, L. Schreers, and R. Wassenberg for help with conducting study 4. This research was supported by a grant from Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (016.025.030).
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Published In
Science
Volume 311 | Issue 5763
17 February 2006
17 February 2006
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American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 20 October 2005
Accepted: 9 January 2006
Published in print: 17 February 2006
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Albright vs. Trump: Scientific evidence for the beneficial effects of careful deliberation
Dear editor,
Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, recently indicated that previous US administrations encouraged careful deliberations on the pros and cons of complex decisions. She suggested that this endorses good decision-making, and recommended that the current Trump administration would act likewise [1]. Recent court orders revoking Trumps immigration decree, however, suggest that pros and cons were not exhaustively deliberated.
What does science say about this? Is there evidence that careful deliberations promote good decisions? An influential Science paper [2], cited over 1000 times and extensively covered by US media, concluded that this is not the case. Instead, it advocated so-called unconscious thinking—that is, thinking about something different than the problem at hand—also in complex political decision-making. However, it has been shown repeatedly that superiority of unconscious thinking fails to replicate [3], and that decisions based on deliberation actually outperform those based on unconscious thinking, provided that a good overview of pros and cons is available [4].
Therefore, current initiatives from the Senate, the judicial system and from the American people, to promote extensive overviews of pros and cons, and to promote careful deliberation on these, can only be encouraged, as Madeleine Albright did.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nORrMRvS4yQ
2. A. Dijksterhuis, M.W. Bos, L.F. Nordgren, R.B. Van Baaren. On making the right choice: The deliberation-without-attention effect. Science, 311, 1005-1007 (2006).
3. M.R. Nieuwenstein, T. Wierenga, R.D. Morey, J.M. Wicherts, T.N. Blom, E-J. Wagenmakers, H. van Rijn. On making the right choice: A meta-analysis and large-scale replication attempt of the unconscious thought advantage. Judgment and Decision Making, 10, 1-17 (2015).
4. H.M. Huizenga, R. Wetzels, D. van Ravenzwaaij, E-J. Wagenmakers. Four Empirical Tests of Unconscious Thought Theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117, 332–340 (2012).