When we must make a very important decision, such as buying a car or an apartment, the best thing we can do is to do our homework, and then forget about it for some time and then reconsider all options.
According to recent research published today in the journal Science, unconscious deliberation may result in a more satisfying choice than mere conscious deliberation alone, at least for relevant choices. The report states that conscious deliberation is reasonable for the less important, more mundane everyday decisions, such as deciding which shampoo to buy, but not for more serious choices.
Four researchers from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, confirmed the value of what they call the “deliberation-without-attention” hypothesis in a series of investigations on consumer choice- both in the lab setting and in real life among shoppers in malls.
For example, in a car-shopping experiment, participants were given a complex series of facts to read concerning cars they intended to buy. Immediately afterwards, they received puzzles to keep their conscious selves busy. After working on the puzzles, participants reported greater satisfaction with their car choice than did purchasers who were not given puzzles and had to decide what car to buy just after consciously pondering the facts.
But for making simple decisions, only conscious deliberations were necessary to make satisfying decisions.
According to scientists, there are a few probable reasons why conscious deliberation sometimes results in poor judgment. Consciousness has a “low capacity” leading people to consider only a subset of relevant information and they may improperly weight the significance of this information. In contrast, the human subconscious has a bigger ability to integrate more information, which can result in better choices.
“The take-home message is that when you have to make a decision, the first step should be to get all the information necessary for the decision. Once you have the information, you have to decide, and this is best done with conscious thought for simple decisions, but left to unconscious thought- to ’sleep on it’- when the decision is complex.”- said Dr. Ap Dijksterhuis, the first author of the study.
According to the scientist, the important conclusion from the research is the “idea that we can think unconsciously and that unconscious thought is actually superior to conscious thought for complex decisions,”
