You’ve just moved out of state and are looking for a new house in the new location. The local real-estate broker informs you elaborately about several available houses and takes you on a tour. After a couple hours you find yourself completely lost.
The houses differ so many ways that you find yourself completely lost. You’re not certain you can actually make a sound choice. One house is bigger than the others, and also more expensive. You’ve been promoted to director, not vice-president. Another house has a beautiful garden, a great opportunity for you and your wife to unwind and also enjoy some fresh vegetables. Still a third house is a rickety old mansion. It has three bathrooms, one of them with Tuscany marble. A glorious room. . .
So what should you do? One way is by merely flipping a coin. All the houses are pretty nice—and who really cares about Tuscan marble? Besides, who wants to make a major financial decision by flipping a coin. Not very responsible. Still a better, more regarded way is to go about the process very thoughtfully. List the pros and cons, define the priorities. Maybe you can come up with the best decision this way.
Yet, faced with no clear decision, why not take your time and “sleep on it.” Instead of spending too much time thinking, maybe you can delegate the task to the unconscious, and at some point you will intuitively “feel” the very best option. Most will agree that this will lead to a better decision than flipping a coin, but that it’s probably a poorer decision than a decision after thorough, conscious thought. So what happened? The best decision, based on numerous data, is the unconscious--the intuitive "feel."
A different, research-based process
Dijksterhuis and Nordgren and others compared the quality of these choices in several different experiments. In the experiments some people were not given the opportunity to think at all before choosing the alternatives. Others were able to consciously think before choosing. Still others were distracted for a while before choosing—and so could only engage in unconscious thought.
Based upon the actual desirability in the above situation as well as with apartment comparisons, the conclusions were enlightening. Some participants found the decisions too difficult. Others could not compare the better versus the poorer apartments. A similar problem in the above housing selections.
In both housing and apartment desirability, only the unconscious thinkers reported the appropriate preferences. The unconscious thought theory (UTT) has been applied to numerous and diverse settings. Among the more fascinating conclusions is that conscious thought has capacity—it can only manage a maximum of seven issues. Unconscious thought, in contrast has a much higher capacity. These studies all find that consciousness uses only a limited subset of available information. Thus, this restriction impacts the quality of a choice or decision. In every instance, the unconscious inevitably provides the best solution.
For more than eleven years, I created two or three new sermons every week of the year for differing congregations. I learned early on that when having difficulties pulling sermonic material together into a responsive whole, I turned off the intellectual faucet, went to bed for the night. And when I woke up in the morning, the sermon was complete, more creative, more relevant and readier for reception.
The unconscious has far more power and ability to achieve than the conscious. Now we have extensive, empirical research to support this conclusion.
Dijksterhyuis and Nordgren, A theory of unconscious thought, Perspectives on psychological science, 2006.