Psychology - Unconscious Thought Theory

[Jinxu]

Our first major line of research focuses on the role of unconscious and conscious processes in decision making and creativity. Starting point for this research was the observation that conscious deliberation is limited in many ways, and that there is the possibility that people can engage in what we call unconscious thought. The easiest way to explain what we mean by unconscious thought is to refer to Schopenhauer. In 1826, he said the following

In the past few years, we have found evidence for the fact that people indeed think unconsciously, that unconscious thought leads to increased creativity, and that it improves decision-making. In fact, decisions after unconscious thought are sometimes (often, we believe) better than decisions after conscious thought.

Here are some selected studies that will clarify what is meant by conscious vs unconscious thinking:

The Merits of Unconscious Thought in Preference Detection and Decision Making
http://unconsciouslab.nl/publication...n%20Making.pdf

The Deliberation Without Attention Effect
http://www.unconsciouslab.nl/publica...n%20effect.pdf

The Generative Power of Unconscious Thought
http://www.unconsciouslab.nl/publica...%20Thought.pdf

Unconscious Tthought Can Increase Post-choice Satisfaction
http://www.unconsciouslab.nl/publica...tisfaction.pdf

On the Goal-dependency of Unconscious Thought
http://www.unconsciouslab.nl/publica...%20Thought.pdf


Source: http://www.unconsciouslab.com/index....ious%20Thought

[Dissident]

Sounds very interesting, but the links arent working.

EDIT: Nevermind, Opera betrayed me, tried with IE and it works

[Jinxu]

Originally Posted by Dissident

Sounds very interesting, but the links arent working.

It should be now.