Similar Effects for Resting State and Unconscious Thought: Both Solve Multi-attribute Choices Better Than Conscious Thought

Abstract

When people have headaches, they put their work aside and do other things. When they return, their decisions may be better, resulting in more satisfaction than if they had contemplated their choices consciously. Researchers have proposed the "deliberation-without-attention" hypothesis to discover whether it is always advantageous to engage in conscious deliberation before making a choice. Unconscious thinking can optimize people's behavioral decision-making in a complex environment and improve their satisfaction with their choices. As previous studies have not used a resting state (RS), another kind of unconscious thinking, this paper adds the RS to unconscious thinking during distracting tasks, unconscious and conscious joint thinking, and conscious thinking conditions, to study the unconscious thought effect and decision-making performance in four different thinking modes. We performed three experiments involving a choice of jobs, using two ways of presenting information, to check the unconscious effect and compare the decision-making performance of different thinking patterns. The results show that RS and unconscious thinking have similar effects, while people's decision-making performance differs in different thinking modes.

Keywords: decision performance; job decision; resting state; thinking mode; unconscious thought effect.

FIGURE 1

The experimental research procedure; except in Experiment 3, the immediate decision condition, subjects made their decisions right after the presentation of information.

FIGURE 2

Accuracy in choosing the best job in different thinking modes when information was presented piece-by-piece in Experiment 1.

FIGURE 3

The mean of the differential attitude scores under different thinking modes in Experiment 1. Higher scores indicate larger attitude scores. Error bars indicate the SE of the differential attitude scores.

FIGURE 4

Accuracy in choosing the best job under different thinking modes when information was presented in lists in Experiment 2.

FIGURE 5

The mean of the differential attitude scores under different thinking modes in Experiment 2. Higher scores indicate larger attitude scores. Error bars indicate the SE of the differential attitude scores.

FIGURE 6

Accuracy in choosing the best job under different thinking modes when information was presented piece-by-piece in Experiment 3.

FIGURE 7

The mean of the differential attitude scores in different thinking modes in Experiment 3. Higher scores indicate larger attitude scores. The error bars indicate the SE of the differential attitude scores.