unconscious influences on decision-making

Introspecting about Reasons (Wilson et al., 1993)

A study suggesting that explaining reasons for preferences can reduce post-choice satisfaction, especially for items one might naturally prefer intuitively, like art posters.

Nisbett & Wilson (1977)

Researchers who proposed that people have no direct awareness of perceptual and memory processes and 'tell more than we can know' about their mental processes.

"Telling more than we can know"

The idea that people often verbalize reasons for their mental processes or choices that are based on plausible theories rather than actual direct awareness or the true causes.

Two-String Problem

A problem-solving task where participants struggle to tie two cords until an 'accidental' cue from the experimenter, which they subsequently fail to report as the true cause of their solution, instead confabulating reasons.

Confabulation of Causes

The act of inventing plausible, but incorrect, explanations or causes for one's actions or solutions when direct awareness is absent.

Order Effects

A phenomenon where the position of identical items (e.g., stockings) influences choice, often with the right-most object being over-chosen, without participants being consciously aware of this influence.

Choice Blindness Paradigm

A research method where participants are unaware that their chosen item (e.g., a face, a moral statement rating) has been covertly swapped, yet they readily provide reasons for the altered choice.

Ecological Validity

A concern in research regarding whether the findings accurately reflect real-world situations, often raised for studies using highly controlled or artificial conditions.

Adaptive Unconscious

The idea that unconscious processes can make stable, informed evaluations, especially if a person has gathered sufficient information, suggesting that 'trusting your gut' can be effective given prior knowledge.

Limitations of Conscious Thought

It tends to focus on available, salient, and verbalizable information, struggles with large amounts of data, and relies on potentially inaccurate background theories.

Unconscious-Thought Theory (UTT)

Developed by Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, this theory proposes that people can engage in unconscious deliberation, which may lead to better choices than conscious thought under complex circumstances.

Deliberation-without-attention Hypothesis

The hypothesis stating that unconscious thought will lead to better choices than conscious thought under complex circumstances, as conscious thought's performance decreases with complexity, while unconscious thought's performance is unaffected.

Replicability

The reliability of a prior research finding when attempting to reproduce it under similar conditions, often used generally to indicate whether new data yields the same result.

Questionable Research Practices (QRPs)

Practices such as p-hacking (manipulating studies to get statistical significance), HARKing (changing hypotheses after seeing results), and selective reporting, which can undermine the trustworthiness of research findings.

Publication Bias

The failure to submit or publish null or inconclusive research results, leading to a skewed literature where statistically significant findings are over-represented (also known as the file drawer problem).

Open Science

A movement promoting transparency and collaboration in research through practices like open access to data, protocols, and materials, as well as preregistration of studies and Registered Reports.

Preregistration

The practice of stating hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans in advance of data collection to prevent HARKing and p-hacking and enhance research transparency.

Limen

Latin for 'threshold', referring to the point at which a stimulus is strong enough to be perceived.

Subliminal

A stimulus that is sensed but is not intense or long-lasting enough to enter conscious awareness.

Supraliminal

A stimulus that is above the threshold of conscious perception and will enter consciousness if it is attended to.

Priming

A phenomenon where exposure to a stimulus influences a subsequent response, often without conscious awareness of the stimulus effect.

Semantic Priming

Exposure to a word or concept (e.g., 'ocean') facilitates the recall or processing of a related word or concept (e.g., 'tide'), often explained by spreading activation within associative networks.

Repetition Priming

Exposure to a stimulus subsequently makes it easier or faster to recall or process the same stimulus that was previously encountered.

Social/Behavioral Priming

A category of priming effects that activate concepts leading to specific social behaviors or attitudes (e.g., money, flag, age priming), many of which have been challenged due to failures of replication.