Unconscious influences on decision making: a critical review
- PMID: 24461214
- DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X12003214
Unconscious influences on decision making: a critical review
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.
Comment in
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How necessary is the unconscious as a predictive, explanatory, or prescriptive construct?Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):28. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X1300071X. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24460927
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Do implicit evaluations reflect unconscious attitudes?Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):28-9. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000721. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24460957
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But what if the default is defaulting?Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):29-30. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000733. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24460987
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Context, as well as inputs, shape decisions, but are people aware of it?Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):30-1. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000745. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461040
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Automatic processes, emotions, and the causal field.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):31-2. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000757. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461058
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Is the unconscious, if it exists, a superior decision maker?Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):32-3. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000769. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461083
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Neuroscientific evidence for contextual effects in decision making.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):33-4. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000770. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461164
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Restrictive and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious: perspectives from moral and developmental psychology.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):34-5. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000782. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461209
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Why decision making may not require awareness.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):35-6. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000794. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461251
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Degraded conditions: confounds in the study of decision making.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):19-20. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000629. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461262
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Better tests of consciousness are needed, but skepticism about unconscious processes is unwarranted.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):36-7. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000800. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461307
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Maybe it helps to be conscious, after all.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):20-1. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000630. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461308
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Demonstrations of subconscious processing with the binary exclusion task.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):37. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000812. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461343
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The problem of consciousness in habitual decision making.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):21-2. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000642. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461349
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Self-insight research as (double) model recovery.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):37-8. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000824. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461368
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Unconscious influences on decision making in blindsight.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):22-3. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000654. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461390
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What we (don't) know about what we know.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):38-9. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000836. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461460
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Unconscious influences on decision making: neuroimaging and neuroevolutionary perspectives.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):23-4. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000666. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461474
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Extremely rigorous subliminal paradigms demonstrate unconscious influences on simple decisions.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):39-40. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000848. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461480
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Unconscious influences of, not just on, decision making.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):24-5. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000678. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461535
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Even "unconscious thought" is influenced by attentional mechanisms.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):40-1. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X1300085X. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461549
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Newell and Shanks' approach to psychology is a dead end.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):25-6. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X1300068X. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461557
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The presumption of consciousness.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):26-7. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000691. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461588
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Performance and awareness in the Iowa Gambling Task.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):41-2. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000861. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461621
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Dismissing subliminal perception because of its famous problems is classic "baby with the bathwater".Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):27. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000708. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461635
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The problem of the null in the verification of unconscious cognition.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):42-3. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000873. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461672
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What makes a conscious process conscious?Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):43-4. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000885. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461733
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The effect of the cognitive demands of the distraction task on unconscious thought.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):44-5. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000897. Epub 2014 Jan 24. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24461809
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Authors' response: the primacy of conscious decision making.Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Feb;37(1):45-61. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x13001507. Behav Brain Sci. 2014. PMID: 24719903
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