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CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN DECISION MAKING 1 Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Decision Making
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Klein, Barry M. |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | Theories abound about how conscious and subconscious processes interact, both subjectively and neurochemically, in order for people to make their decisions. I demonstrate that no physical mechanism need exist for distinguishing between conscious and non-conscious processes (or rational vs. non-rational, explicit vs. implicit, etc.), and that the entire matter can be more easily and accurately explained in terms of more-or-less autonomous personality perspectives’ competing with each other. I present the idea that the so-called “unconscious processes” can be viewed as conscious, each in its appropriate context, just as a ‘fact’ (e.g., “all celestial bodies revolve about the earth, which is flat”) becomes a myth from a different perspective. Therefore, my hypothesis can be stated as: Decisions are made from greater or lesser integrations of personal perspectives; i.e., how much one is in touch with himself, or whether a person’s character has enough room in it to ruminate from conflicting viewpoints. In order to do this, I redefine ‘consciousness’ and “the unconscious” in a more useful way than has been hitherto, and demonstrate why meaningful and useful decisions cannot be made from what has erroneously been referred to as “the conscious state.” CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN DECISION MAKING 3 Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Decision Making Existing theories about explicit and implicit memory In most of the literature I reviewed, explicit and implicit memory were referred to as conscious thought and unconscious processes, respectively. This section summarizes the theories and findings of a representative selection of papers and studies on the subject. Deliberation-Without-Attention (DWA). According to Aczel, Lukacs, Komlos, and Aitken (2011), the DWA effect cannot be proven to enhance unconscious decision-making processes and, furthermore, they claim, unconsciousness of the decision process led to poorer performance. However, Constantinidis (2011) pointed out that such incubation allows unconscious processing to help solve problems which were felt to be too complex, difficult, or novel to solve consciously, as long as there had been prior reflection and knowledge acquired on the subject, even though it had not yet been integrated sufficiently to produce a conscious solution; this position was supported by the Dijksterhuis (2004) paper. Therefore I suspect the study’s authors of foreclosure errors in drawing their conclusions, such that they selected experiments which were insufficiently complex, difficult, or novel, and without the requisite prior study, to fully utilize the benefits of incubation. The experiments they ran included judgments the participants were to make about their housemates, and tasks similar to the Wason experiment (CogLab, 2008). The unconscious in current psychology. Norman (2010) explained how current cognitive research has been moving toward a graduated scale of states ranging from conscious to unconscious and, moreover, that the field has not settled on a consistent definition for either of the two extremes. Some researchers equate CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN DECISION MAKING 4 consciousness with the application of attention, others with verbal skill, still others with performance on various standardized tests. That would make the unconscious seem to be the absence of those criteria, but research into the functioning of the unconscious continues to show that some important kinds of processing take place at the unconscious level. Unconscious thought in preference development. The Dijksterhuis study (2004) revealed, experimentally, that preference decisions made rationally, on the conscious level, proved inferior to those made unconsciously, following distraction. The experiments indicated the unconscious processes’ leading to more lucid and better integrated representation in the memory of the subjects. The theory behind this study was based on the assumption that conscious thought would be counterproductive for complex decisions, due to their conclusion that consciousness has low processing capacity. My criticism of this research is not that their conclusion is wrong, but that their experiments were too superficial, not involving serious ethical dilemmas, and that their definition of consciousness was too mundane, restricted to a superficial realm of perception and rational processing. In this current paper’s section on my own theories, I present what I consider to be a superior definition of both consciousness and unconsciousness. Integrating conscious and unconscious thought. The Unconscious Thought theory (Nordgren, Bos, & Dijksterhuis, 2011) describes the respective benefits of both conscious and unconscious cognitive processes. According to the authors, an advantage of conscious thought is that it can adhere to precise rules, although unconscious processes are better for integrating complex and multiple decision issues. Most intricate decisions, say the authors, necessitate both types of approaches, and their research CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN DECISION MAKING 5 verified that the combination gave better results than with either conscious or unconscious thought alone, with best performance derived when unconscious process followed conscious deliberation. Process-tracing methodology. Process tracing is the observation of the decision-making processes which a person undergoes before actually responding with a decision (Glaholt & Reingold, 2011). Such observations are made by using eye-movement monitoring, information-search displays, and verbal protocols to assess the cognitive states, processes and stages. This research tested the Gaze Cascade model concerning how much eye movements were involved in deciding preferences. The experiment disconfirmed that model, but supported the role of eye movements in decision alternatives. My criticism of this research is that, again, it is testing only superficial types of decisions rather than soul-shaking moral dilemmas. Processes underlying intuitive judgment and decision making. Glöckner and Witteman (2010) argued that the standard dual-process model is inadequate for understanding decision-making, and they propose that intuition covers an array of cognitive mechanisms which need to be identified and studied. The authors identified several contributing cognitive processes: a) associative intuition relating to simple learning retrieval, b) matching intuition which compares prototypes and exemplars, c) accumulation of evidence, and d) construction of mental depictions. Because those four processes all refer to prosaic instances, I believe that this paper left out the highly intuitive faculties of mystical or ecstatic consciousness (Picard & Craig, 2009), in which a profound sense of oneness and harmony give rise to great wisdom and moral responsibility (Rosenthal, 1993). CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN DECISION MAKING 6 The Rosenthal paper seems to replace the idea of the unconscious with a Higher-Order Thought hypothesis, which is presented as part of the Appendage Theory of Consciousness. This theory rejects the Freudian notion that intentional mental states can be unconscious, such as subliminal perception and Weiskrantz’s blindsight phenomenon, and even the mental processes which contribute to intentional states. The paper catalogues all the things which the Appendage Theory is not, such as awareness of perceptual objects, but does not affirmatively define what it is. My own abstraction of the theory is that it entails immediacy and reflexiveness; that is, one must be directly aware, in the moment, of being in a conscious state. My caveat for that definition is that actually being aware in the moment proves to be both rare and highly difficult, occasionally happening in a flash of near-death experience (Wilde & Murray, 2010) or following years of mindfulness training (Wallace, 2002). The Hirshman and Henzler paper (1998) extended the classical recognition-memory paradigm, which correlated remember judgments (based on conscious recall) and know judgments (based on familiarity, and accessed unconsciously). The authors’ alternative hypothesis was of a single memory process with one or more criteria influencing both types of judgments. Rational and non-rational processes in moral and ethical decision making. The Ham and van den Bos study (2010) demonstrated that, for at least some forms of moral decision making (they used the classical footbridge dilemma), the decisions made from unconscious processes were clearly more pragmatic (although not necessarily more moral) than those from an equal duration (three minutes) of conscious deliberation. My problem with their CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN DECISION MAKING 7 conclusion is that it would tend to excuse people from consciously addressing a moral responsibility and perhaps decide precipitously. According to one study (Rogerson, Gottlieb, Handelsman, Knapp, & Younggren, 2011), conscious moral decisions are never entirely rational in the first place. The authors pointed out that every conscious decision-making process is rife with such unconscious influences as relationships, social context, and previous experiences, leading to innate biases and flaws in reasoning. The Nidich, Nidich, and Alexander (2000) thesis based its theory on a number of disparate platforms: a) Kohlberg’s cognitive-moral development theory and (b) his Cosmic Perspective Stage 7, and c) Alexander’s higher states of consciousness (transcendental, cosmic, God-consciousness, and unity awareness) and their influence in developmental stages. The authors refer to several Transcendental Meditation (TM) programs as effective in moral development, which I find dubious, having known too many examples of people’s losing their moral compass after prolonged practice of TM. Furthermore, I consider Alexander’s four higher-states depictions to be mostly redundant with each other (i.e., one |
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| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://barryklein.org/Walden_papers/Cognitive_Decision_making.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
