Recent research has suggested that young adults make the most optimal decisions when the problem is weighed at the unconscious level, or when they engage in little deliberation (Dijksterhuis, 2004). This is an intriguing finding with important implications for older adultsâ decision making given normative age-related declines in deliberative processing. In the current study, I investigated age differences in the benefits of unconscious relative to conscious thought. I also examined the extent to which these benefits interact with the processing demands of the decision task, and further if age-related benefits associated with unconscious processing might be specific to certain decision making tasks. For example, if the decision task requires selective attention to relevant material, rather than simple evaluation, conscious thought may be more beneficial than unconscious thought and aging may negatively affect performance. Using a procedure developed by Dijksterhuis, young and older adult participants (N = 125) engaged in unconscious or conscious thought processing before selecting a choice from information regarding apartments and banks. The information was presented as intuitive (i.e., optimal choice contained the most positive attributes) or deliberative (i.e., optimal choice based on a subset of information). The results of the study reveled that young adults performed well on the decision task when unconsciously processing intuitive information and consciously processing deliberative information. Older adults were more influenced by the type of information rather than thought processing, which lead them to perform better when they received intuitive information rather than deliberative information, regardless of thought condition. Additionally, both young and older adults displayed choice supportive memory, whereas neither age nor thought condition affected choice satisfaction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-08282008-154259 |
| Date | 13 October 2008 |
| Creators | Queen, Tara Licciardello |
| Contributors | Jason Allaire, Shevaun Neupert, Thomas M. Hess |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-08282008-154259/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.2877 seconds