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Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

Ben R. Newell  and
David R. Shanks
Ben R. Newell
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. ben.newell@unsw.edu.au http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/BNewell/Index.html
David R. Shanks
Affiliation:
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom. d.shanks@ucl.ac.uk http://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychlangsci/research/CPB/people/cpb-staff/d_shanks
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

awarenessconsciousdecision makingdeliberationintuitionjudgmentperceptual-motor skillsunconscious

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Type
Target Article
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Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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