Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review

Abstract

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.

How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman

“…Specifically, in recent years a few influential articles were published questioning seemingly abundant evidence for unconscious processes as (1) underlying human associative learning (Mitchell, De Houwer, and Lovibond 2009;Shanks 2010), and (2) playing a significant role as direct, independent and proximal causes of human judgment and decision making (Kruglanski and Gigerenzer 2011;Newell and Shanks 2014).…”

“…For example, Chartrand (2005) describes the case of unconscious goal priming where one could be unaware of the goal prime itself, of the thought process generated by the goal prime, or of the behavior displayed as a result. Similarly, for judgment and decision tasks, Newell and Shanks (2014) use the lens model (Brunswik 1952) to illustrate that one needs to distinguish awareness of decision criteria, of cues and their validities, as well as of cue utilization and the resulting judgments.…”

“…Shanks and colleagues have proposed a set of four criteria for measures of awareness: reliability, relevance, immediacy, and sensitivity (Lovibond and Shanks 2002;Newell and Shanks 2014;Shanks and St John 1994). Together they form perhaps the greatest reason for these authors' skepticism of the literature on unconscious processes, as few if any articles have used awareness measures satisfying all of these criteria.…”

“…After all, critical evaluations by some of the most knowledgeable scholars in this field have revealed grave deficiencies in the evidence that has so far been presented for unconscious processes, to the extent that they question whether unconscious processes play a significant role at all in many areas relevant for consumer research (Newell and Shanks 2014).…”

Kepatuhan Pajak Dalam Perspektif Neo Ashabiyah

“…Akumulasi penolakan ini bersinergi membentuk ruang antipati intuitif terhadap pajak. Mekanisme intuitif berpotensi menghubungkan individu di seluruh dunia (Newel dan Shanks, 2014) dalam membentuk perilaku dan keputusan serupa. Ruang ini kemudian menjadi validasi yang mengesahkan penolakan pajak secara turun temurun.…”