Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T01:36:21.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Choice blindness and the non-unitary nature of the human mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Petter Johansson
Affiliation:
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, United Kingdom. petter.johansson@lucs.lu.sehttp://www.lucs.lu.se/petter.johansson/
Lars Hall
Affiliation:
Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden.lars.hall@lucs.lu.sehttp://www.lucs.lu.se/lars.hall/peter.gardenfors@lucs.lu.sehttp://www.lucs.lu.se/peter.gardenfors
Peter Gärdenfors
Affiliation:
Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden.lars.hall@lucs.lu.sehttp://www.lucs.lu.se/lars.hall/peter.gardenfors@lucs.lu.sehttp://www.lucs.lu.se/peter.gardenfors

Abstract

Experiments on choice blindness support von Hippel & Trivers's (VH&T's) conception of the mind as fundamentally divided, but they also highlight a problem for VH&T's idea of non-conscious self-deception: If I try to trick you into believing that I have a certain preference, and the best way is to also trick myself, I might actually end up having that preference, at all levels of processing.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ariely, D. & Norton, M. I. (2008) How actions create – not just reveal – preferences. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12:1316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bem, D. J. (1967) Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review 74:183200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Festinger, L. (1957) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, L. & Johansson, P. (2008) Using choice blindness to study decision making and introspection. In: Cognition – A smorgasbord, ed. Gärdenfors, P. & Wallin, A., pp. 267–83. Nya Doxa.Google Scholar
Hall, L., Johansson, P. & Strandberg, T. (in preparation a) Choice blindness and moral decision making.Google Scholar
Hall, L., Johansson, P., Tärning, B., Sikström, S. & Chater, N. (in preparation b) Preference change through choice.Google Scholar
Hall, L., Johansson, P., Tärning, B., Sikström, S. & Deutgen, T. (2010) Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea. Cognition 117:5461.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikstrom, S. & Olsson, A. (2005) Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science 310:116–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., Tärning, B. & Lind, A. (2006) How something can be said about telling more than we can know. Consciousness and Cognition 15(4):673–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lichtenstein, S. & Slovic, P., eds. (2006) The construction of preference. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar