ABSTRACT
Every day people make a multitude of judgments and decisions which differ in complexity and importance. The question how people make these decisions has attracted research interest over many years. Why did some decisions which were based on long deliberation turn out to be bluntly wrong – leading to the break-down of mighty companies and organizations, to financial or political crisis and even wars? How can, on the other hand, complex decision tasks sometimes be solved in the blink of an eye? Obviously, processes that are not only based on deliberate, conscious information processing play a crucial role. We automatically record parts of the information we are confronted with, and are able to use this knowledge in later decisions. Parts of these processes concern conscious information selection, retrieval and processing, other parts operate completely automatically and unconsciously. Both kinds of processes interact. This could lead to a conscious overwriting of initial intuitive choice tendencies. The reverse could also happen: unconscious processes may modify the outcomes of seemingly completely deliberate decisions. They may lead us to act against our deliberate intentions, or they may generate feelings that one should select an option without knowing where this feeling comes from. They may produce vague feelings warning us that although all the facts speak for option A something feels wrong and another option should be selected, and they may even produce insights in complex tasks just in the moment when we stop deliberatively reflecting about them. These phenomena are as fascinating as they are complex and decision research has only just started to unravel them.
