Unexpected Benefits of Deciding by Mind Wandering

Colleen  Giblin; Carey K. Morewedge; Michael I. Norton

Article | Frontiers in Psychology

Unexpected Benefits of Deciding by Mind Wandering

by Colleen Giblin, Carey K. Morewedge and Michael I. Norton

Abstract

The mind wanders, even when people are attempting to make complex decisions. We suggest that such mind wandering—allowing one's thoughts to wander until the "correct" choice comes to mind—can positively impact people's feelings about their decisions. We compare post-choice satisfaction from choices made by mind wandering to reason based choices and randomly assigned outcomes. Participants chose a poster by mind wandering or deliberating—or were randomly assigned a poster. Whereas forecasters predicted that participants who chose by mind wandering would evaluate their outcome as inferior to participants who deliberated (Experiment 1), participants who used mind wandering as a decision strategy evaluated their choice just as positively as did participants who used deliberate choice (Experiment 2). In some cases, people can spare themselves the trouble of deliberation and instead "decide by mind wandering" yet experience no decrease in satisfaction.

Keywords: Decisions; Satisfaction; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cognition and Thinking;

Format: Electronic

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Citation:

Giblin, Colleen, Carey K. Morewedge, and Michael I. Norton. "Unexpected Benefits of Deciding by Mind Wandering." Art. 598. Frontiers in Psychology 4 (September 6, 2013).

Article | Journal of Consumer Psychology

The Feeling of Not Knowing It All

Haiyang Yang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

How do consumers assess their mastery of knowledge they have learned? We explore this question by investigating a common knowledge consumption situation: encountering opportunities for further learning. We argue and show that such opportunities can trigger a feeling-of-not-knowing-it-all (FONKIA), which lowers consumers’ confidence in their mastery of the knowledge they already possess. Specifically, listing optional follow-up readings at the conclusion of a course lowered students’ confidence in their mastery of the course material they had already learned (Study 1). Encountering an optional learning opportunity increased the FONKIA, which mediated the decreased confidence (Studies 2 and 3). We also document two moderators consistent with our conceptualization. First, participants primed with mastery (vs. instrumental) motivation were more negatively impacted when they encountered optional learning opportunities. Second, the more related the optional opportunities were to the target topic, the lower participants’ confidence in their mastery of what they had already learned. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, such as encouraging further learning or harming teaching evaluations.

Keywords: Knowledge consumption; Consumption of learning; Judgment of knowledge; Feeling ofknowing; Confidence in knowledge; WYSIATI; FONKIA; Knowledge Acquisition; Learning; Perception;

Citation:

Yang, Haiyang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely, and Michael I. Norton. "The Feeling of Not Knowing It All." Journal of Consumer Psychology 29, no. 3 (July 2019): 455–462. View Details

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