Unconscious-Thought Effects Take Place Off-Line, Not On-Line

摘要

The unconscious-thought effect refers to an improvement in decision making following distraction from the decision context fora period of time. The dominant explanation for this effect is that unconscious processes continue to deal with the problemduring the distraction period. Recently, however, some researchers have proposed that unconscious thinkers may be merelyrecalling a judgment that was formed on-line (i.e., during information acquisition).We present two experiments that rule outthe latter interpretation. In the unconscious-thought condition of the first experiment, participants who reported makingtheir decision after unconscious thought made better decisions than those who reported making their decision on-line. In thesecond experiment, all participants judged the choice alternatives both on-line and off-line. On-line judgments were predictiveof off-line judgments only in the immediate-decision condition, but not in the conscious- and unconscious-thought conditions.These results demonstrate that a period of unconscious thought does improve judgments that were formed earlier on-line.