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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Columbus A-C (Hyatt Regency Penns Landing)
Background Information: Unconscious, intuitive processing sometimes results in better decisions than conscious, deliberative processing (e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006; Wilson , 2002). When a decision task is complex, the latter may result in less optimal decisions, due to the low processing capacity of conscious thought (Wilson , 2002). Moreover, deliberate information processing seems to be handicapped by suboptimal weighting of the importance of attributes (Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). Previous research on the role of unconscious processing focused on decisions about apartments, roommates, cars and various types of consumer decisions. We focused on conscious versus unconscious processing in a complex part of medical decision-making: classification.
Purpose: To test whether conscious versus unconscious processing influenced classification of psychiatric case descriptions from the DSM IV Casebook.
Method: 80 students in Clinical Psychology from the Radboud University Nijmegen (68 females, 12 males) participated. Participants read two case descriptions from the DSM IV Casebook. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the conscious-processing-condition (i.e. consciously thinking about the information they read in the case description for four minutes), the other half to the unconscious-processing-condition (i.e. performing an unrelated puzzle task for four minutes, cf. Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). Our main dependent measure was the total number of correct classifications. For each of the two cases, two correct classifications were possible (both cases represented co-morbidity of problems). The maximum number of correct classifications was thus 4.
Results: Compared to conscious processing, intuitive, unconscious processing increased the number of correct classifications (Ms 2.15 vs. 2.80), F(1,79) = 13.88, p < .001
Conclusion: Our results show the potential merits of unconscious processing in diagnostic decision making.
Purpose: To test whether conscious versus unconscious processing influenced classification of psychiatric case descriptions from the DSM IV Casebook.
Method: 80 students in Clinical Psychology from the Radboud University Nijmegen (68 females, 12 males) participated. Participants read two case descriptions from the DSM IV Casebook. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the conscious-processing-condition (i.e. consciously thinking about the information they read in the case description for four minutes), the other half to the unconscious-processing-condition (i.e. performing an unrelated puzzle task for four minutes, cf. Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). Our main dependent measure was the total number of correct classifications. For each of the two cases, two correct classifications were possible (both cases represented co-morbidity of problems). The maximum number of correct classifications was thus 4.
Results: Compared to conscious processing, intuitive, unconscious processing increased the number of correct classifications (Ms 2.15 vs. 2.80), F(1,79) = 13.88, p < .001
Conclusion: Our results show the potential merits of unconscious processing in diagnostic decision making.
See more of: Poster Session III
See more of: 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (October 19-22, 2008)