title: Bias or equality? Unconscious thought equally integrates temporally scattered information.
abstract: In previous experiments on unconscious thought, information was presented to participants in one continuous session; however, in daily life, information is delivered in a temporally partitioned way. We examined whether unconscious thought could equally integrate temporally scattered information when making overall evaluations. When presenting participants with information in two temporally partitioned sessions, participants' overall evaluation was based on neither the information in the first session (Experiment 1) nor that in the second session (Experiment 2); instead, information in both sessions were equally integrated to reach a final judgment. Conscious thought, however, overemphasized information in the second session. Experiments 3 and 4 further ruled out possible influencing factors including differences in the distributions of positive/negative attributes in the first and second sessions and on-line judgment. These findings suggested that unconscious thought can integrate information from a wider range of periods during an evaluation, while conscious thought cannot.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China; Department of Psychology, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
authors.forename: Jiansheng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
authors.forename: Qiyang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
authors.forename: Jifan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
authors.forename: Xinyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China. Electronic address: mwshen@zju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Mowei
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013997:Time Factors; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology
keywords: Decision making; Integration information; Unconscious thought