The Impact of the Mode of Thought in Complex Decisions: Intuitive Decisions are Better

Abstract

A number of recent studies have reported that decision quality is enhanced under conditions of inattention or distraction (unconscious thought; Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, 2006; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). These reports have generated considerable controversy, for both experimental (problems of replication) and theoretical reasons (interpretation). Here we report the results of four experiments. The first experiment replicates the unconscious thought effect, under conditions that validate and control the subjective criterion of decision quality. The second and third experiments examine the impact of a mode of thought manipulation (without distraction) on decision quality in immediate decisions. Here we find that intuitive or affective manipulations improve decision quality compared to analytic/deliberation manipulations. The fourth experiment combines the two methods (distraction and mode of thought manipulations) and demonstrates enhanced decision quality, in a situation that attempts to preserve ecological validity. The results are interpreted within a framework that is based on two interacting subsystems of decision-making: an affective/intuition based system and an analytic/deliberation system.

The interplay between presentation material and decision mode for complex choice preferences

“…In this case, following UTT's capacity principle, conscious deliberation should lose its advantage and better choices should be observed when they are preceded by a distraction task. The few empirical results obtained with pictorial material (e.g., Dijksterhuis & van Olden, 2006) suggest that such material may help unconscious thought because it leads participants to integrate and configure information holistically (Lerouge, 2009;Usher, Russo, Weyers, Brauner, & Zakay, 2011).…”

“…In the original procedure introduced by Dijksterhuis (2004), participants in the deliberation condition had to recall attributes in order to examine the pros and cons of each choice alternative during the postacquisition phase. As noted by Rey, Goldstein, and Perruchet (2009), this procedure is likely to create output interference (Tulving & Arbuckle, 1966) given the similarity of the different product attributes to be considered for making a decision. Therefore, to ensure that deliberation was not artificially hindered, participants in this condition were given access to the panel information for all four products while they were deliberating.…”

Prefrontal inositol levels and implicit decision-making in healthy individuals and depressed patients

“…Interestingly, both inositol levels and explicit understanding acquired during the task contributed to final IGT performance in an independent fashion. Decision-making has been hypothesized to be controlled by both implicit and explicit systems (Usher et al, 2011), a model often known as the dual-system theory (Evans, 2008). Inositol may be particularly implicated in the acquisition of an implicit knowledge guiding decision-making, while not influencing the acquisition of an explicit understanding.…”

Kepatuhan Pajak Dalam Perspektif Neo Ashabiyah

“…Kesadaran intuisi selama ini terabaikan karena dominasi pikiran (mind) dalam paradigma positifis (Cartesian). Padahal, intuisi berkapasitas tak terbatas dan mampu menghasilkan keputusan lebih optimal , kreatif (Weisberg 2006), lebih berbobot (Usher et al, 2011) dan jika dibandingkan dengan kapasitas keputusan level pikiran.…”