The benefits of "sleeping on things": Unconscious thought leads to automatic weighting

Abstract

We tested and confirmed the hypothesis that unconscious thought leads to an automatic weighting process whereby important decision attributes receive more weight, and unimportant decision attributes receive less weight. In three experiments, participants chose between cars with few important positive attributes and many unimportant negative attributes ("Quality cars"), and cars with many unimportant positive attributes and few important negative attributes ("Frequency cars"). In all experiments, unconscious thinkers showed a stronger preference for Quality cars than immediate decision makers, showing that unconscious thought indeed evokes an automatic weighting process. An alternative explanation is refuted and implications are discussed.