Evaluating the Benefits of Conscious and Unconscious Thought in Complex Decision Making

Abstract

Decision-making research reports mixed findings about the best way to make complex decisions involving multiple criteria. While some researchers emphasize the importance of conscious thought to make good decisions, others encourage people to stop thinking and trust their snap judgments. Still others recommend a distracting activity prior to making a choice, assuming that unconscious processing of the decision problem occurs during distraction. We review studies comparing these three decision modes. We show that conscious deliberation helps people to make good decisions when people have in mind precise verbatim information about the exact features of each alternatives. By contrast, a distraction period is more useful when meaning-based gist representations of the alternatives are accessible. Finally, while a period of distraction or deliberation is beneficial for decision making under certain conditions, to blindly follow one’s gut feeling is never the right solution.