Unconscious Processing of Information in Dynamic Decision Making - An Experimental Approach

The purpose o f the paper is to investigate the effects o f unconscious versus conscious ways o f making decisions in a dynamic decision-making task. An experimental setting is used to study this question; three experimental groups are distinguished: immediate decision-making (only limited time for cognitive processing), considered decision­ making (time for conscious processing), and distracted decision-making (time for unconscious processing). As experimental stimulus, a simulator based on the Kaibab Plateau model is employed. Although more than 100 subjects have been tested so far, group differences are not significant for most data examined. Implications comprise the improvement o f the experiment in order to derive at more substantial results. The value o f the paper lies in the fact that it connects to a recent discussion in psychology and transfers it into a domain in the core interest o f the system dynamics community: decision-making in situations with dynamic complexity.