Introspecting About Reasons Can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfaction

Wilson, Timothy D.; Lisle, Douglas J.; Schooler, Jonathan W.; Hodges, Sara D.; Klaaren, Kristen J.; LaFleur, Suzanne J.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511618031.027

Cited by 150 publications

(247 citation statements)

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“…These motives often provide a better guide to behavior than does conscious and presumably rational analysis of a single current instance, which may be ignorant of base rates and prior automatic actions. This supposition accords with research by T. D. Wilson (e.g., T. D. Wilson & Schooler, 1991 ;T. D. Wilson et al, 1993 ), which demonstrates that people's "gut level" feelings are often more effective guides to action and lead to more subsequent satisfaction than do their reasoned reflections, which can interfere with emotion-based judgments.…”

Section: Unconscious Motivationsupporting

confidence: 85%

The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science.

Westen

1998

Psychological Bulletin

342

249

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Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to operate in parallel and produce compromise solutions; (c) the origins of many personality and social dispositions in childhood; (d) mental representations of the self, others, and relationships; and (e) developmental dynamics. An enormous body of research in cognitive, social, developmental, and personality psychology now supports many of these propositions. Freud's scientific legacy has implications for a wide range of domains in psychology, such as integration of affective and motivational constraints into connectionist models in cognitive science.Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity. Although the majority of clinicians report that they rely to some degree upon psychodynamic 1 principles in their work ( Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith-Spiegel, 1987 ), most researchers consider psychodynamic ideas to be at worst absurd and obsolete and at best irrelevant or of little scientific interest. In the lead article of a recent edition of Psychological Science, Crews (1996) arrived at a conclusion shared by many: " [T]here is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas" (p. 63).Despite the explosion of empirical studies of unconscious cognitive processes (see, e.g., Greenwald, 1992 ;Kihlstrom, 1987 ;Schacter, 1992 ), few reference Freud; none cite any contemporary psychodynamic work; and in general, psychodynamic concepts are decreasingly represented in the major psychology journals ( Robins & Craik, 1994 ). The situation is similar in the popular media and in broader intellectual discourse. Publications ranging from Time to the New York Review of Books periodically publish Freud's intellectual obituary, with critics charging that Freud's ideas-such as his dual-instinct theory or his hypotheses about female personality development-are seriously out of date and without scientific merit (e.g., Crews, 1993 ).Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out of date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939, and he has been slow to undertake further revisions. His critics, however, are equally behind the times, attacking countenance was last sighted in earnest. Contemporary psychoanalysts and psychodynamic therapists no longer write much about ids and egos, nor do they conceive of treatment for psychological disorders as an archaeological expedition in search of lost memories ( Aron, 1996 ;Gabbard, 1994 ;Horowitz, 1988 ;Kolb, Cooper, & Fishman, 1995 ;Mitchell, 1988 ;Wachtel, 1993 ). People do sometimes describe feelings or behav...

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Section: Unconscious Motivationsupporting

confidence: 85%

The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science.

Westen

1998

Psychological Bulletin

342

249

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“…Specifically, conscious reflection can reduce the quality of choices and post-choice satisfaction (Wilson & Schooler, 1991;Wilson et al, 1993); it can produce suboptimal decisions (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006); it can overshadow adaptive memory processes (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). In addition, conscious reflection hardly seems to help Mindful attention 55 people predict what they will truly enjoy in the future (Gilbert & Wilson, 2009).…”

Section: Mindful Attention In Social Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The benefits of simply observing: Mindful attention modulates the link between motivation and behavior.

Papies¹,

Pronk²,

Keesman³

et al. 2015

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

165

182

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Mindful attention, a central component of mindfulness meditation, can be conceived as becoming aware of one's thoughts and experiences, and being able to observe them as transient mental events. Here, we present a series of studies demonstrating the effects of applying this meta-cognitive perspective to one's spontaneous reward responses when encountering attractive stimuli. Taking a grounded cognition perspective, we argue that reward simulations in response to attractive stimuli contribute to appetitive behavior, and that motivational states and traits enhance these simulations. Directing mindful attention at these

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“…In many subsequent studies, Wilson (2002) and Schooler et al (1993) have observed that the introspective act itself can change preferences or other mental representations being scrutinized and can do so in undesirable ways. In one study (Wilson et al, 1993), when individuals were asked to introspect on their reasons for liking or disliking two art prints before choosing one to keep and take home, they were more likely to make a choice that they would later regret, compared to those who had not introspected. Why this effect occurs is still unclear.…”

Section: Reflective Social Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Principles, processes, and puzzles of social cognition: An introduction for the special issue on social cognitive neuroscience

Lieberman

2005

NeuroImage

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This article introduces the special issue of NeuroImage focused on social cognitive neuroscience. Social psychology has a rich history of making sense of the often paradoxical aspects of social cognition and the social world. This article reviews the principles, processes, and puzzles of social cognition and behavior that have been examined by social psychologists for decades. Five principles of social cognition and behavior are reviewed including: (1) the power of the situation over behavior, (2) blindness for situational influences, (3) social perception and self-perception are constructive processes, (4) blindness for the constructed nature of social and self-perception, and (5) self-processes are social. Four processes of social cognition are reviewed including: (1) cognitive architecture; (2) automaticity and control; (3) motivated reasoning; and (4) accessibility, frames, and expectations. Finally, five areas of social cognition that contain enduring puzzles are described including (1) the self, (2) attitudes, (3) reflective social cognition, (4) automatic social cognition, and (5) social motives. In several of the areas of study reviewed, cognitive neuroscience is well positioned to make important contributions to these research traditions either by allowing for new tests of hypotheses or by allowing for unobtrusive measurement of social cognitive processes. D

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Introspecting About Reasons Can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfaction

Cited by 150 publications

References 0 publications

The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science.

The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science.

The benefits of simply observing: Mindful attention modulates the link between motivation and behavior.

Principles, processes, and puzzles of social cognition: An introduction for the special issue on social cognitive neuroscience

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