The Frontal Cortex

Another week, another fascinating seminar over at Mind Matters. The paper in question concerns a topic near and dear to me: decision making. Here's the abstract:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing. On the basis of recent insights into the characteristics of conscious and unconscious thought, we tested the hypothesis that simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results after conscious thought, but that choices in complex matters (such as between different houses or different cars) should be left to unconscious thought. Named the "deliberation-without-attention" hypothesis, it was confirmed in four studies on consumer choice, both in the laboratory as well as among actual shoppers, that purchases of complex products were viewed more favorably when decisions had been made in the absence of attentive deliberation.

The basic theory behind the paper is that our consciousness is extremely limited. (Our rationality is "bounded".) At any given moment, we can only hold 7 or so items in working memory, and are pretty terrible at statistical analysis. Given these constraints, it shouldn't be too surprising that our consciousness often makes bad decisions, especially when we are required to analyze multiple factors at the same time.

So what's the alternative? One option is to disown our consciousness all together, and rely on our adaptive unconscious instead. This part of our brain uses simple heuristics, gut instincts, and dopaminergic emotions to make decisions. Instead of carefully analyzing the situation, it just goes with what feels best.

Sure enough, in many different consumer situations, the adaptive unconscious makes better decisions that our more rational and introspective consciousness. Here's a description of one of Dijksterhuis' experiments:

Dijksterhuis and colleagues asked volunteers to read brief descriptions of four hypothetical cars and pick the one they'd like to buy after mulling it over for 4 minutes. The researchers made the decision far simpler than it is in real life by limiting the descriptions to just four attributes such as good gas mileage or poor legroom. One of the cars had more plusses than the others, and most participants chose this car. But when the researchers made the decision more complex by listing 12 attributes for each car, people identified the best car only about 25% of the time--no better than chance. The real surprise came when the researchers distracted the participants with anagram puzzles for 4 minutes before asking for their choices. More than half picked the best car. The counterintuitive conclusion, Dijksterhuis says, is that complex decisions are best made without conscious attention to the problem at hand.

I still think the seminal experiment on this topic was done by Timothy Wilson.

In the early 1990's, Wilson asked a few dozen female undergraduates to choose between several different posters. He gave them five options: a Monet landscape, a Van Gogh painting of some purple lilies, and three humorous cat posters. Before making their choices, the subjects were divided into two groups. The first group was the "non-thinking" group: they were simply instructed to rate each poster on a scale from 1 to 9, with 9 being best. The second group had a tougher task: before they rated the posters, they were given a questionnaire which asked them why they liked or disliked each of the five posters. At the end of the experiment, each of the subjects was given her favorite poster to take home.

The two groups of women made very different choices. Ninety-five percent of the "non-thinkers" chose either the Monet or the Van Gogh. Their feelings preferred the fine art. However, subjects who thought about their poster decision first were almost equally split between the impressionist paintings and the humorous cat posters. What accounted for the difference? "When looking at a painting by Monet," Wilson says, "most people generally have a positive reaction. When thinking about why they feel the way they do, however, what comes to mind and is easiest to verbalize might be that some of the colors are not very pleasing, and that the subject matter, a haystack, is rather boring." As a result, the women end up selecting the funny feline posters, if only because those posters gave them more grist for their explanatory mill.

In order to see which group made better decisions, Wilson conducted a follow up interview with the women a few weeks later. He asked them whether or not they still liked their poster, and how much money it would take to buy the poster from them. Sure enough, the "non-thinking" group was much more satisfied. While 75 percent of the people who chose the cat posters now regretted their selection, nobody regretted selecting the impressionists. The women who listened to their emotions ended up making much better decisions than the women who relied on their powers of reasoning. The more people thought about which poster they wanted the more misleading their thoughts became. Introspection resulted in less self-awareness and worse decision-making.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we should all propose marriage on the first date, or buy a book based on its cover. Rational analysis still has a purpose. But it does imply that, when making many of our consumer decisions, we should rely on our gut instincts and instantaneous emotions. These unconscious feelings, and not our powers of reason, are what allow us to maximize utility.

PS. I should also note that George Loewenstein has an excellent critique of this paper over at Mind Matters.