The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect: Evidence for an Artifactual Interpretation

Proponents of unconscious-thought theory assert that letting the unconscious "mull it over" can enhance decisions. In a series of recent studies, researchers demonstrated that participants whose attention was focused on solving a complex problem (i.e., those using conscious thought) made p...

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Published inPsychological science Vol. 20; no. 6; pp. 671 - 675
Main Authors Lassiter, G. Daniel, Lindberg, Matthew J., González-Vallejo, Claudia, Bellezza, Francis S., Phillips, Nathaniel D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA Wiley Periodicals 01.06.2009
SAGE Publications
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Anagrams
Attention
Automobiles
Awareness
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive psychology
Conceptual frameworks
Consciousness
Decision Making
Experiments
Humans
Impression formation
Individuality
Information attributes
Judgement
Judgment
Memorization
Memory
Mental Recall
Need for cognition
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Problem Solving
Research Reports
Retention (Psychology)
Reversal
Reversal Learning
Social psychology
Thinking
Unconscious (Psychology)
Unconscious mind
Unconsciousness
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Summary:Proponents of unconscious-thought theory assert that letting the unconscious "mull it over" can enhance decisions. In a series of recent studies, researchers demonstrated that participants whose attention was focused on solving a complex problem (i.e., those using conscious thought) made poorer choices, decisions, and judgments than participants whose attention was distracted from the problem (i.e., those purportedly using unconscious thought). We argue that this finding, rather than establishing the existence of a deliberation-withoutattention effect, is explained more compellingly in terms of the well-established distinction between on-line and memory-based judgments. In Experiment 1, we reversed the recent finding by simply changing participants ' on-line processing goal from impression formation to memorization. Experiment 2 provided a replication and further established that some cognitive effort appears necessary to produce both the original pattern of results and its reversal, suggesting that such judgments are ultimately a product of conscious, rather than unconscious, thinking.
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ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02347.x