Analytic Thought Disrupts Familiarity-Based Decision Making

Abstract

We propose that analytic thought, operationalized as analyzing reasons for a decision, can influence judgments by interfering with the use of familiarity and other subjective experiences as decision cues. In an experimental demonstration of this phenomenon, participants chose which of two musical passages, one of which they had been exposed to earlier in the study, was the most objectively popular according as a supposed internet survey. Half of the participants analyzed the reasons for their popularity judgments prior to making them. As expected, control participants tended to choose the subjectively familiar songs as more objectively popular, but reasoning reduced this preference to chance levels. Discussion examines the generality, usefulness, and boundary conditions of the use of subjective familiarity and other subjective experiences as judgment cues, and sets out an initial framework for understanding when analytic thought will be helpful or harmful.