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Subliminally and Supraliminally Acquired Long-Term Memories Jointly Bias Delayed Decisions
Simon Ruch1,2, Elizabeth Herbert3, Katharina Henke1,2
1Department of Psychology, University of BernBern, Switzerland.
Frontiers in Psychology
|September 29, 2017
Summary
Both unconscious and conscious memories shape our decisions. When information is encoded both subliminally and supraliminally, it strongly influences choices, demonstrating the impact of unconscious memory on decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Decision Science
Background:
- Traditional views emphasize conscious deliberation for decision-making.
- Emerging research highlights the role of unconscious processing in influencing choices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the hypothesis that both consciously and unconsciously acquired memories guide decision-making.
- To measure the impact of subliminal and supraliminal information on delayed decision tasks.
Main Methods:
- Participants underwent unconscious encoding of face-occupation pairs presented subliminally.
- Conscious re-encoding involved supraliminal presentation of faces with same, congruous, or incongruous occupations.
- Decision-making was assessed indirectly by asking participants to estimate incomes for faces, promoting intuitive responses.
Main Results:
- Both unconsciously and consciously encoded memories significantly influenced income decisions.
- Identical unconscious and conscious memories produced the strongest decision bias.
- Non-identical (congruous or incongruous) subliminal and supraliminal memories canceled each other out, resulting in no bias.
Conclusions:
- Decision-making is influenced by a combination of conscious and unconscious memory.
- Even weakly represented subliminal memories can have a lasting impact on choices.
- The interplay between conscious and unconscious memory encoding is crucial for understanding decision processes.
Keywords:
decision-makinghippocampuslong-term memoryrelational learningsubliminal stimulationunconscious processingMore Related Videos
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