Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review
Newell and Shanks ask how far people know their own minds when making decisions. Many theories give a heavy explanatory burden to an intelligent cognitive unconscious with causally effective roles. The article presents a framework for evaluating these claims and reviews evidence from three bodies of research in which unconscious factors have been studied: multiple-cue judgment, deliberation without attention, and decisions under uncertainty. It also considers studies of priming.
Newell and Shanks ask how far people know their own minds when making decisions. Many theories give a heavy explanatory burden to an intelligent cognitive unconscious with causally effective roles. The article presents a framework for evaluating these claims and reviews evidence from three bodies of research in which unconscious factors have been studied: multiple-cue judgment, deliberation without attention, and decisions under uncertainty. It also considers studies of priming.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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Newell, B. R., & Shanks, D. R. (2014). Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(1), 1-19. doi:10.1017/S0140525X12003214.