"
Want to make a complicated decision? Just stop thinking", was one of hundreds of headlines spawned by a
study published in 2006 by
Ap Dijksterhuis and colleagues. The team of Dutch researchers reported that students made "better" decisions after being distracted by an anagram task, compared with when they spent the same number of minutes deliberating over their choices.
While the conscious mind was busy solving anagrams, the researchers claimed the unconscious, with its unlimited process capacity, was left free to sift through the information pertinent to making the best decision.
But now,
Ben Newell and colleagues have copied the experimental set up used by Dijksterhuis and failed to find that the outcome of unconscious deliberation is any better than consciously chewing over a decision.
Student participants were presented with a choice of apartments or cars (depending on the experiment), and were told whether each available option ticked the box or missed the mark for one of ten attributes, such as security or rent. Participants then made their favoured choice either immediately, or after a 4 or 8 minute period of conscious deliberation or distraction.
The actual "best" choice was identified later, by asking the participants to score how much each attribute mattered to them on a scale of one to ten. For each item, the weight of those attributes it lacked was subtracted from those it performed well at, thus revealing the "best" option.
Regardless of how participants made their choice - immediately, or after either conscious or subconscious deliberation - they tended to choose the best option. "In stark contrast to claims in the literature and the media," the researchers wrote, "we found very little evidence of the superiority of unconscious thought for complex decisions."
In fact, a final experiment suggested that we make our choices "on-line" as new information is gathered, rather than after deliberation, conscious or unconscious. Moreover, a period of unconscious deliberation led participants to place disproportionate weight in the most recently acquired information. This suggests "that a period of distraction can enhance recency effects and, in this case, lead to poorer choices," the researchers concluded.
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Ben Newell, Kwan Yao Wong, Jeremy Cheung, Tim Rakow (2008). Think, blink or sleep on it? The impact of modes of thought on complex decision making The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1-1 DOI: 10.1080/17470210802215202 Link to PDF of this paper via the first author's website.
Link to more than 20 prior Digest blog posts on decision making.
译文:
想要作出一个复杂的决定？保持思考！
“想要作出一个复杂的决定？停止思考吧。”这是在2006年出版的《学习》里成百上千个标题里的一个，这本书由Ap Dijksterhuis和他的同事们撰写的，这队荷兰的研究者报道认为，相比花同样的时间在选择题里反复考虑，从锱铢必较的工作中转移出来更容易让学生们作出“更好的”决定。
当有意识的大脑忙于解决那些由颠倒字母而成的字时，研究者认为，无意识的那部分大脑能带着它无限制的加工能力，自由的过滤相关信息，并作出最好的决定。
但是现在，本·纽威尔和他的同事们重复了Dijksterhuis所建立的这套实验理论，却并没有发现无意识间深思熟虑出来的结果比有意识的斟酌一个决定来得更好。
依据试验，参与的学生面对的是一个房子与汽车的抉择，作为十分之一的答案特性，他们会被告知每一个选择是击中答案还是错失靶心，比如说安全感或者租金。然后参与者需要做出一个自己倾向的答案，这个决定可以是即时作出，也可以在经过4～8分钟的深思熟虑后才给出答案。
通过要求参与者为每一个区别性的特性对他们的影响程度从一到十打分，这个所谓的最佳答案稍后揭晓了。对于每一个选项，那些缺失的特征所占有的份量被从那些良好的特征里面减去了，于是最好的答案就显露了出来。
不管参与者是如何作出决定的——瞬间的决定，或是在经过有意识或下意识的考虑过后的决定——他们都倾向于选择最佳方案。研究者写道：“在经过缜密的对比后发表在文学作品和媒体上的言论，我们很难发现无意识思考所体现出来的解决复杂问题的优越性。
事实上，一项最终测试表明，当新的信息聚集起来时，我们就会使我们的选择“更新到当前”，这并非来自有意识或无意识思考的结果。而且，一段时间的下意识思考会引导参与者将并不重要的成份放在近期所需求的信息里。这表明“一段时间的分心会催化最近的影响，在这种情况下导致一个更加糟糕的选择。”研究者总结道。
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Ben Newell, Kwan Yao Wong, Jeremy Cheung, Tim Rakow (2008)。《思考、眨眼还是在上面睡觉？在制定复杂决定中思维模式的影响》， 参考《心理学报》，DOI标识符：10.1080/17470210802215202
通过第一作者的网站链接到此论文的PDF
在作出决定上，连接了20多篇早期的博客摘要