Hostname: page-component-669899f699-cf6xr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T19:31:07.668Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

Ben R. Newell  and
David R. Shanks
Ben R. Newell
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. ben.newell@unsw.edu.auhttp://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/BNewell/Index.html
David R. Shanks
Affiliation:
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom. d.shanks@ucl.ac.ukhttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychlangsci/research/CPB/people/cpb-staff/d_shanks
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Keywords

awarenessconsciousdecision makingdeliberationintuitionjudgmentperceptual-motor skillsunconscious
Type
Target Article
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Acker, F. (2008) New findings on unconscious versus conscious thought in decision making: Additional empirical data and meta-analysis. Judgment and Decision Making 3:292–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ackerman, J. M., Nocera, C. C. & Bargh, J. A. (2010) Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgments and decisions. Science 328:1712–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Adair, J. G. & Spinner, B. (1981) Subjects' access to cognitive processes: Demand characteristics and verbal report. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 11:31–52.Google Scholar
Ariely, D. & Norton, M. I. (2011) From thinking too little to thinking too much: A continuum of decision making. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 2:39–46.Google Scholar
Arkes, H. R. (1981) Impediments to accurate clinical judgment and possible ways to minimize their impact. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 49:323–30.Google Scholar
Azzopardi, P. & Cowey, A. (1997) Is blindsight like normal, near-threshold vision? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94:14190–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baars, B. J. (2002) The conscious access hypothesis: Origins and recent evidence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6(1):47–52.Google Scholar
Balzer, W. K., Rohrbaugh, J. & Murphy, K. R. (1983) Reliability of actual and predicted judgments across time. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 32:109–23.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M. & Burrows, L. (1996) Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71:230–44.Google Scholar
Baron, J. (2008) Thinking & deciding (4th ed). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J. & Vohs, K. D. (2011) Do conscious thoughts cause behavior? Annual Review of Psychology 62:331–61. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.131126.Google Scholar
Bechara, A., Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H. & Anderson, S. W. (1994) Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition 50(1–3):7–15. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8039375.Google Scholar
Bechara, A., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. R. (2000) Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex 10:295–307.Google Scholar
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D. & Damasio, A. R. (1997) Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science 275:1293–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bechara, A., Tranel, D., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. R. (1996) Failure to respond autonomically to anticipated future outcomes following damage to prefrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex 6:215–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beckstead, J. W. (2007) A note on determining the number of cues used in judgment analysis studies: The issue of type II error. Judgment and Decision Making 2:317–25.Google Scholar
Benjamin, L. T., Cavell, T. A. & Shallenberger, W. R. (1984) Staying with initial answers on objective tests: Is it a myth? Teaching of Psychology 11:133–41.Google Scholar
Benson, B. L., Anguera, J. A. & Seidler, R. D. (2011) A spatial explicit strategy reduces error but interferes with sensorimotor adaptation. Journal of Neurophysiology 105:2843–51.Google Scholar
Bhalla, M. & Proffitt, D. R. (1999) Visual-motor recalibration in geographical slant perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 25:1076–96.Google ScholarPubMed
Blair, I. V., Judd, C. M. & Chapleau, K. M. (2004a) The influence of Afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing. Psychological Science 15:674–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blair, I. V., Judd, C. M. & Fallman, J. L. (2004b) The automaticity of race and Afrocentric facial features in social judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87:763–78.Google Scholar
Block, N. (2007) Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30:481–99.Google Scholar
Bos, M. W., Dijksterhuis, A. & van Baaren, R. B. (2011) The benefits of “sleeping on things”: Unconscious thought leads to automatic weighting. Journal of Consumer Psychology 21:4–8.Google Scholar
Bowman, C. H., Evans, C. E. Y. & Turnbull, O. H. (2005) Artificial time constraints on the Iowa Gambling Task: The effects on behavioural performance and subjective experience. Brain and Cognition 57:21–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brooks, L. R., Norman, G. R. & Allen, S. W. (1991) The role of specific similarity in a medical diagnostic task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120:278–87.Google Scholar
Brooks, L. R. & Vokey, J. R. (1991) Abstract analogies and abstracted grammars: Comments on Reber (1989) and Mathews et al. (1989) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 120:316–23.Google Scholar
Brunswik, E. (1952) The conceptual framework of psychology. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Calvillo, D. P. & Penaloza, A. (2009) Are complex decisions better left to the unconscious? Further failed replications of the deliberation-without-attention effect. Judgment and Decision Making 4:509–17.Google Scholar
Campion, J., Latto, R. & Smith, Y. M. (1983) Is blindsight an effect of scattered light, spared cortex, and near-threshold vision? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6:423–86.Google Scholar
Cella, M., Dymond, S., Cooper, A. & Turnbull, O. (2007) Effects of decision-phase time constraints on emotion-based learning in the Iowa Gambling Task. Brain and Cognition 64:164–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cowey, A. (2010) The blindsight saga. Experimental Brain Research 200:3–24.Google Scholar
Crandall, B. & Getchell-Reiter, K. (1993) Critical decision method: A technique for eliciting concrete assessment indicators from the “intuition” of NICU nurses. Advances in Nursing Sciences 16:42–51.Google Scholar
Davis, T., Love, B. C. & Maddox, W. T. (2009) Anticipatory emotions in decision tasks: Covert markers of value or attentional processes? Cognition 112:195–200.Google Scholar
Dawes, R. M., Faust, D. & Meehl, P. E. (1989) Clinical versus actuarial judgment. Science 243(4899):1668–74.Google Scholar
Dawson, M. E. & Reardon, P. (1973) Construct validity of recall and recognition postconditioning measures of awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology 98:308–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dayan, E. & Bar-Hillel, M. (2011) Nudge to nobesity II: Menu positions influence food orders. Judgment and Decision Making 6:333–42.Google Scholar
Dhami, M. K., Hertwig, R. & Hoffrage, U. (2004) The role of representative design in an ecological approach to cognition. Psychological Bulletin 130:959–88.Google Scholar
Dienes, Z. & Seth, A. (2010) Gambling on the unconscious: A comparison of wagering and confidence ratings as measures of awareness in an artificial grammar task. Consciousness and Cognition 19:674–81.Google Scholar
Dijksterhuis, A. (2004) Think different: The merits of unconscious thought in preference development and decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87:586–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M. W., Nordgren, L. F. & van Baaren, R. B. (2006b) On making the right choice: The deliberation-without-attention effect. Science 311(5763):1005–1007. doi: 10.1126/science.1121629.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M. W., van der Leij, A. & van Baaren, R. (2009) Predicting soccer matches after unconscious and conscious thought as a function of expertise. Psychological Science 20:1381–87.Google Scholar
Dijksterhuis, A. & Nordgren, L. F. (2006) A theory of unconscious thought. Perspectives in Psychological Science 1:95–109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dijksterhuis, A., Spears, R., Postmes, T., Stapel, D. A., Koomen, W., van Knippenberg, A. & Scheepers, D. (1998) Seeing one thing and doing another: Contrast effects in automatic behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75:862–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, N. F. (1971) Subliminal perception: The nature of a controversy. McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Doyen, S., Klein, O., Pichon, C.-L. & Cleeremans, A. (2012) Behavioral priming: It's all in the mind, but whose mind? PLoS One 7:e29081.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, B. D., Dalgleish, T. & Lawrence, A. D. (2006) The somatic marker hypothesis: A critical evaluation. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30:239–71.Google Scholar
Durgin, F. H., Baird, J. A., Greenburg, M., Russell, R., Shaughnessy, K. & Waymouth, S. (2009) Who is being deceived? The experimental demands of wearing a backpack. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16:964–968.Google Scholar
Edwards, W. & Fasolo, B. (2001) Decision technology. Annual Review of Psychology 52:581–606.Google Scholar
Ericsson, K. A. & Simon, H. A. (1980) Verbal reports as data. Psychological Review 87:215–51.Google Scholar
Evans, C. E. Y., Bowman, C. H. & Turnbull, O. H. (2005) Subjective awareness on the Iowa Gambling Task: The key role of emotional experience in schizophrenia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 27:656–64.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (2008) Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment and social cognition. Annual Review of Psychology 59:255–78.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Clibbens, J., Cattani, A., Harris, A. & Dennis, I. (2003) Explicit and implicit processes in multicue judgment. Memory & Cognition 31:608–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fried, I., Mukamel, R. & Kreiman, G. (2011) Internally generated preactivation of single neurons in human medial frontal cortex predicts volition. Neuron 69:548–62.Google Scholar
Gámez, E., Díaz, J. M. & Marrero, H. (2011) The uncertain universality of the Macbeth effect with a Spanish sample. Spanish Journal of Psychology 14:156–62.Google Scholar
Gavanski, I. & Hoffman, C. (1987) Awareness of influences on one's own judgments: The roles of covariation detection and attention to the judgment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52:453–63.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G. (2007) Gut feelings: The intelligence of the unconscious. Viking Press.Google Scholar
Gladwell, M. (2005) Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. Penguin.Google Scholar
Glöckner, A. & Betsch, T. (2008) Multiple-reason decision making based on automatic processing. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition 34:1055–75.Google Scholar
Glöckner, A. & Witteman, C. (2010) Beyond dual-process models: A categorisation of processes underlying intuitive judgement and decision making. Thinking & Reasoning 16:1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, J. I. & Shadlen, M. N. (2007) The neural basis of decision making. Annual Review of Neuroscience 30:535–74.Google Scholar
Goldstein, D. G. & Gigerenzer, G. (2002) Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic. Psychological Review 109:75–90.Google Scholar
González-Vallejo, C., Lassiter, G. D., Bellezza, F. S. & Lindberg, M. J. (2008) “Save angels perhaps”: A critical examination of unconscious thought theory and the deliberation-without-attention effect. Review of General Psychology 12(3):282–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
González-Vallejo, C. & Phillips, N. (2010) Predicting soccer matches: A reassessment of the benefit of unconscious thinking. Judgment and Decision Making 5:200–206.Google Scholar
Guerin, B. & Innes, J. M. (1981) Awareness of cognitive processes: Replications and revisions. Journal of General Psychology 104:173–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutbrod, K., Kroužel, C., Hofer, H., Müri, R., Perrig, W. & Ptak, R. (2006) Decision-making in amnesia: Do advantageous decisions require conscious knowledge of previous behavioural choices? Neuropsychologia 44:1315–24.Google Scholar
Ham, J., van den Bos, K. & van Doorn, E. (2009) Lady Justice thinks unconsciously: Unconscious thought can lead to more accurate justice judgments. Social Cognition 27:509–21.Google Scholar
Hammond, K. R. (1996) Human judgment and social policy: Irreducible uncertainty, inevitable error, unavoidable injustice. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, K. R. & Stewart, T. R., eds. (2001) The essential Brunswik: Beginnings, explications, applications. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harré, R. & Madden, E. H. (1975) Causal powers: A theory of natural necessity. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harries, C., Evans, J. St. B. T. & Dennis, I. (2000) Measuring doctors' self-insight into their treatment decisions. Applied Cognitive Psychology 14:455–77.3.0.CO;2-V>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassin, R. R., Ferguson, M. J., Shidlovski, D. & Gross, T. (2007) Subliminal exposure to national flags affects political thought and behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(50): 19757–61.Google Scholar
Hastie, R. & Park, B. (1986) The relationship between memory and judgment depends on whether the judgment task is memory-based or on-line. Psychological Review 93:258–68.Google Scholar
Hogarth, R. M. (2001) Educating intuition. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hogarth, R. M. (2010) Intuition: A challenge for psychological research on decision making. Psychological Inquiry 21:338–53.Google Scholar
Holender, D. (1986) Semantic activation without conscious identification in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and appraisal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9, 1–66.Google Scholar
Huizenga, H. M., Wetzels, R., Van Ravenzwaaij, D. & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2012) Four empirical tests of unconscious thought theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 117(2):332–40. doi: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.11.010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ikomi, P. A. & Guion, R. M. (2000) The prediction of judgment in realistic tasks: An investigation of self-insight. International Journal of Aviation Psychology 10:135–53.Google Scholar
Isaacson, W. (2007) Einstein: His life and universe. Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Johnstone, T. & Shanks, D. R. (2001) Abstractionist and processing accounts of implicit learning. Cognitive Psychology 42:61–112.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, fast and slow. Allen Lane and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. & Klein, G. (2009) Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist 64:515–26.Google Scholar
Karelaia, N. & Hogarth, R. M. (2008) Determinants of linear judgment: A meta-analysis of lens model studies. Psychological Bulletin 134(3):404–26.Google Scholar
Kelley, H. & Friedman, D. (2002) Learning to forecast price. Economic Inquiry 40:556–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keren, G. & Schul, Y. (2009) Two is not always better than one: A critical evaluation of two-system theories. Perspectives on Psychological Science 4:533–50.Google Scholar
Klein, G. (1993) A recognition primed decision (RDP) model of rapid decision making. In: Decision making in action: Models and methods, ed. Klein, G., Oransu, J., Calderwood, R. & Zsambok, C., pp. 138–47. Ablex.Google Scholar
Konstantinidis, E. & Shanks, D. R. (2013) Don't bet on it! Wagering as a measure of awareness in decision making under uncertainty. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Lagnado, D. A., Newell, B. R., Kahan, S. & Shanks, D. R. (2006) Insight and strategy in multiple cue learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 135:162–83.Google Scholar
Lassiter, D. G., Lindberg, M. J., González-Vallejo, C., Bellezza, F. S. & Phillips, N. D. (2009) The deliberation-without-attention effect: Evidence for artifactual interpretation. Psychological Science 20:671–75.Google Scholar
Lehrer, J. (2009) The decisive moment: How the brain makes up its mind. Text Publishing.Google Scholar
Lerouge, D. (2009) Evaluating the benefits of distraction on product evaluations: The mind-set effect. Journal of Consumer Research 36:367–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Y. & Epley, N. (2009) When the best appears to be saved for last: Serial position effects on choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 22:378–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Libet, B. (1985) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8:529–39.Google Scholar
Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W. & Pearl, D. K. (1983) Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral-activity (readiness potential): The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 106:623–42.Google Scholar
Loersch, C. & Payne, B. K. (2011) The situated inference model: An integrative account of the effects of primes on perception, behavior, and motivation. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6:234–52.Google Scholar
Logan, G. D. & Zbrodoff, N. J. (1979) When it helps to be misled: Facilitative effects of increasing the frequency of conflicting stimuli in a Stroop-like task. Memory & Cognition 7:166–74.Google Scholar
Lovibond, P. F. & Shanks, D. R. (2002) The role of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning: Empirical evidence and theoretical implications. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 28:3–26.Google Scholar
Maia, T. V. & McClelland, J. L. (2004) A re-examination of the evidence for the somatic marker hypothesis: What participants really know in the Iowa Gambling Task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102:16075–80.Google Scholar
Mamede, S., Schmidt, H. G., Rikers, R. M. J. P., Custers, E. J. F. M., Splinter, T. A. W. & van Saase, J. L. C. M. (2010) Conscious thought beats deliberation without attention in diagnostic decision-making: At least when you are an expert. Psychological Research 74:586–92.Google Scholar
Mantonakis, A., Rodero, P., Lesschaeve, I. & Hastie, R. (2009) Order in choice: Effects of serial position on preferences. Psychological Science 20:1309–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Bandi Rao, S. & Vishton, P. M. (1999) Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science 283:77–80.Google Scholar
McClure, J. (2012) Attributions, causes, and actions: Is the consciousness of will a perceptual illusion? Theory & Psychology 22:402–19. doi: 10.1177/0959354310386845.Google Scholar
Meehl, P. E. (1954) Clinical vs. statistical prediction. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. (2000) Measurement error in subliminal perception experiments: Simulation analyses of two regression methods. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26:1461–77.Google Scholar
Miller, J., Shepherdson, P. & Trevena, J. (2011) Effects of clock monitoring on electroencephalographic activity: Is unconscious movement initiation an artifact of the clock? Psychological Science 22:103–109.Google Scholar
Nahmias, E. (2005) Agency, authorship, and illusion. Consciousness and Cognition 14:771–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newell, B. R. & Bright, J. E. H. (2002) Well past midnight: Calling time on implicit invariant learning? European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 14:185–205.Google Scholar
Newell, B. R., Lagnado, D. A. & Shanks, D. R. (2007b) Straight choices: The psychology of decision making. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Newell, B. R. & Rakow, T. (2011) Revising beliefs about the merits of unconscious thought: Evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. Social Cognition 29:711–26.Google Scholar
Newell, B. R., Wong, K. Y., Cheung, J. C. & Rakow, T. (2009) Think, blink or sleep on it? The impact of modes of thought on complex decision making. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62:707–32.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E. & Wilson, T. D. (1977) Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review 84(3):231–59.Google Scholar
Nordgren, L. F., Bos, M. W. & Dijksterhuis, A. (2011) The best of both worlds: Integrating conscious and unconscious thought best solves complex decisions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47:509–11.Google Scholar
Overgaard, M. (2011) Visual experience and blindsight: A methodological review. Experimental Brain Research 209:473–79.Google Scholar
Overgaard, M., Fehl, K., Mouridsen, K., Bergholt, B. & Cleeremans, A. (2008) Seeing without seeing? Degraded conscious vision in a blindsight patient. PLoS One 3:e3028.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pashler, H., Harris, C. & Coburn, N. (2011, September 15) Elderly-related words prime slow walking. Retrieved May 30, 2012, from http://www.PsychFileDrawer.org/replication.php?attempt=MTU%3D.Google Scholar
Payne, J. W., Samper, A., Bettman, J. R. & Luce, M. F. (2008) Boundary conditions on unconscious thought in complex decision making. Psychological Science 19(11):1118–23. doi: 10.1111/j.1467–9280.2008.02212.x.Google Scholar
Persaud, N., McLeod, P. & Cowey, A. (2007) Post-decision wagering objectively measures awareness. Nature Neuroscience 10:257–261.Google Scholar
Phelps, R. H. & Shanteau, J. (1978) Livestock judges: How much information can an expert use? Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 21:209–219.Google Scholar
Pothos, E. M. (2007) Theories of artificial grammar learning. Psychological Bulletin 133:227–44.Google Scholar
Pratte, M. S. & Rouder, J. N. (2009) A task-difficulty artifact in subliminal priming. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 71(6):1276–83.Google Scholar
Ramsøy, T. Z. & Overgaard, M. (2004) Introspection and subliminal perception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3:1–23.Google Scholar
Rees, G., Frith, C. D. & Lavie, N. (1997) Modulating irrelevant motion perception by varying attentional load in an unrelated task. Science 278:1616–19.Google Scholar
Reilly, B. A. & Doherty, M. E. (1989) A note on the assessment of self-insight in judgment research. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 44:123–31.Google Scholar
Reilly, B. A. & Doherty, M. E. (1992) The assessment of self-insight in judgment policies. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 53:285–309.Google Scholar
Reingold, E. M. & Merikle, P. M. (1988) Using direct and indirect measures to study perception without awareness. Perception & Psychophysics 44:563–75.Google Scholar
Renkewitz, F., Fuchs, H. & Fiedler, S. (2011) Is there evidence of publication bias in JDM research? Judgment and Decision Making 60:870–81.Google Scholar
Rey, A., Goldstein, R. M. & Perruchet, P. (2009) Does unconscious thought improve complex decision making? Psychological Research 73:372–79.Google Scholar
Richardson, D. C., Spivey, M. J. & Hoover, M. A. (2009) How to influence choice by monitoring gaze. In: Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, ed. Taatgen, N., van Rijn, H., Nerbonne, J. & Schomaker, L., pp. 2244. Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Rolison, J. J., Evans, J. St. B. T., Walsh, C. R. & Dennis, I. (2011) The role of working memory capacity in multiple-cue probability learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 64:1494–514.Google Scholar
Rouder, J. N., Morey, R. D., Speckman, P. L. & Pratte, M. S. (2007) Detecting chance: A solution to the null sensitivity problem in subliminal priming. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14:597–605.Google Scholar
Shanks, D. R. (2006) Complex choices better made unconsciously? Science 313:760.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shanks, D. R. & St. John, M. F. (1994) Characteristics of dissociable human learning systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17:367–447.Google Scholar
Shanteau, J. (1992) Competence in experts: The role of task characteristics. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 53:252–66.Google Scholar
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D. & Simonsohn, U. (2011) False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant Psychological Science 22:1359–66.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1992) What is an explanation of behavior? Psychological Science 3:150–61.Google Scholar
Slovic, P., Fleissner, D. & Bauman, W. S. (1972) Analyzing the use of information in investment decision making: A methodological proposal. Journal of Business 45:283–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slovic, P. & Lichtenstein, S. (1971) Comparison of Bayesian and regression approaches to the study of information processing in judgment. Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance 6:649–744.Google Scholar
Smith, E. R. & Miller, F. D. (1978) Limits on perception of cognitive processes: A reply to Nisbett and Wilson. Psychological Review 85:355–62.Google Scholar
Speekenbrink, M. & Shanks, D. R. (2010) Learning in a changing environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 139:266–98.Google Scholar
Strick, M., Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M. W., Sjoerdma, A., van Baaren, R. B. & Nordgren, L. F. (2011) A meta-analysis on unconscious thought effects. Social Cognition 29:738–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strick, M., Dijksterhuis, A. & van Baaren, R. (2010) Unconscious-thought effects take place off-line, not on-line. Psychological Science 21:484–88.Google Scholar
Surber, C. F. (1985) Measuring the importance of information in judgment: Individual differences in weighting ability and effort. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 35:156–78.Google Scholar
Thorsteinson, T. J. & Withrow, S. (2009) Does unconscious thought outperform conscious thought on complex decisions? A further examination. Judgment and Decision Making 4:235–47.Google Scholar
Tomb, I., Hauser, M., Deldin, P. & Caramazza, A. (2002) Do somatic markers mediate decisions on the gambling task? Nature Neuroscience 5:1103–104.Google Scholar
Trevena, J. A. & Miller, J. (2002) Cortical movement preparation before and after a conscious decision to move. Consciousness and Cognition 11:162–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A. & Bloom, P. (2008) Varieties of social cognition. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 38:293–322.Google Scholar
Usher, M., Russo, Z., Weyers, M., Brauner, R. & Zakay, D. (2011) The impact of the mode of thought in complex decisions: Intuitive decisions are better. Frontiers in Psychology 2(March):37. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00037.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vrieze, S. I. & Grove, W. M. (2009) Survey on the use of clinical and mechanical prediction methods in clinical psychology. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 40:525–31.Google Scholar
Wagar, B. M. & Dixon, M. (2006) Affective guidance in the Iowa Gambling Task. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 6:277–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagenmakers, E.-J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D. & van der Maas, H. L. J. (2011) Why psychologists must change the way they analyze their data: The case of psi. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100:432–36.Google Scholar
Waroquier, L., Marchiori, D., Klein, O. & Cleeremans, A. (2010) Is it better to think unconsciously or to trust your first impression? Social Psychological and Personality Science 1:111–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wegner, D. M. (2004) Précis of The illusion of conscious will . Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27:649–92.Google Scholar
Wegner, D. M., Sparrow, B. & Winerman, L. (2004) Vicarious agency: Experiencing control over the movements of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86:838–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weisberg, R. W. (2006) Creativity: Understanding innovation in problem solving, science, invention, and the arts. Wiley.Google Scholar
Weiskrantz, L. (1986) Blindsight: A case study and implications. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weiskrantz, L. (2009) Is blindsight just degraded normal vision? Experimental Brain Research 192:413–16.Google Scholar
White, P. (1980) Limitations on verbal reports of internal events: A refutation of Nisbett and Wilson and of Bem. Psychological Review 87:105–12.Google Scholar
White, P. A. (1988) Knowing more about what we can tell: “Introspective access” and causal report accuracy 10 years later. British Journal of Psychology 79:13–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, P. A. (1989) Evidence for the use of information about internal events to improve the accuracy of causal reports. British Journal of Psychology 80:375–82.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. D. & Nisbett, R. E. (1978) The accuracy of verbal reports about the effects of stimuli on evaluations and behavior. Social Psychology 41:118–31.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. D. (2002) Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. D. & Schooler, J. W. (1991) Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60:181–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C. & Wilbarger, J. L. (2005) Unconscious affective reactions to masked happy versus angry faces influence consumption behavior and judgments of value. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31:121–35.Google Scholar
Wright, P. & Rip, P. D. (1981) Retrospective reports on the causes of decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40:601–14.Google Scholar
Zhong, C.-B. & Liljenquist, K. (2006) Washing away your sins: Threatened morality and physical cleansing. Science 313:1451–52.Google Scholar