In this article, we argue that when forming justice judgments, unconscious thought can lead to more accurate justice judgments than both conscious thought and immediate judgment. In two experiments, participants formed justice judgments about complex job application procedures. Specifically, participants made comparative justice judgments (Experiment 1) or absolute justice judgments on rating scales (Experiment 2). In immediate judgment conditions, participants made a justice judgment immediately after reading the stimulus materials. In conscious thought conditions, participants consciously thought about their justice judgment for 3 minutes. In unconscious thought conditions, participants were distracted for 3 minutes and then reported their justice judgments. As predicted, findings of both experiments show that unconscious thinkers made the most accurate justice judgments. These results provide a new perspective on the social psychology of justice judgments and yield additional insight into unconscious thinking.
Ever since the days of Aristotle and Plato, there have been arguments in moral philosophy and philosophical ethics that either rationalist or intuitionist conceptions of justice are true (Beauchamp, 2001). Rationalistic and intuitionist models describe the way people form justice judgments differently. For example, imagine reading a detailed description of four different application procedures that four job applicants experienced. How will you make the most accurate judgments about the justice levels of each of these application procedures? Rationalistic approaches to the justice judgment process dictate that people make their justice judgments by thinking hard about the just and unjust components of each application procedure and make deliberate and conscious justice judgments (e.g., Kant, 1785). In contrast, intuitionist models of justice judgments state that people make justice judgments by following their gut reactions and can give their justice judgments immediately (e.g., Hume, 1739). Extending on these models, the current article argues for the merits of a new way of thinking about how people best should construct justice judgments: We argue that giving your justice judgments after a few minutes of distraction and thereby not consciously but unconsciously processing the problem at hand may lead to the most accurate justice judgments about these application procedures.
[...] Interestingly, recent research findings suggest that for complex judgments, unconscious social-cognitive processes have merits (Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren, & Van Baaren, 2006). Conscious thought “refers to the cognitive and/ or affective task-relevant processes one is consciously aware of while attending to a task” (Dijksterhuis, 2004, p. 586). For example, one can compare two apartments one could buy, and consciously compare the different aspects of both apartments and then make a decision. Unconscious thought on the other hand “refers to cognitive and/or affective task-relevant processes that take place outside conscious awareness” (Dijksterhuis, 2004, p. 586). The saying “To sleep on it” characterizes this kind of processing and its merits (although, of course, unconscious thinking does not refer to sleeping). When deciding on one of two apartments for example, one can compare the two, distract the mind from the problem for some time, and only then the thought “I’ll choose apartment A” pops into mind. This thought itself is conscious, but the transition from indecision to a preference some time later is the result of unconscious thought.
When solving complex problems, Dijksterhuis and colleagues (Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006) argue that unconscious thinking leads to more accurate judgments whereas conscious thinking leads to less accurate judgments. They argue so mainly because of the limits of conscious human processing capacity (Miller, 1956) whereas human unconsciousness is very well able to integrate large amounts of information (Betsch, Plessner, Schwieren, & Gütig, 2001). Another relevant factor in this respect is that unconscious thinkers can continue to think about pressing matters in the absence of conscious attention. [...] More specifically, we argue in the present article that because many important justice judgments may involve complex decision problems (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998), people will profit from and hence make very accurate justice judgments through unconscious thinking. That is, when making justice judgments people often need to base their justice judgments on a lot of information, gathered from many different sources. For example, for making a justice judgment about the justice-levels of job application procedures at a certain company, a person needs to gather many different pieces of information from various sources, and needs not only process that information on its own, but also the corresponding source-characteristics. Making a justice judgment about such a situation indeed constitutes a complex decision problem (see also Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). So, in line with unconscious thought theory (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006), we argue that it should be the case that participants in unconscious thinking conditions will report the most accurate justice judgments, compared to conscious thought and immediate decision conditions. [...] Importantly, the current findings indicate that unconscious thought can lead to more accurate justice judgments than both conscious thought and immediate judgment can. Thereby, the current findings suggest that in the many areas of human functioning in which justice judgments play an important role, unconscious thinking has merits over other ways of processing and that these merits are important to investigate. An important example would be the area of law, where judges have to make important decisions based in a major part on justice judgments. Intriguingly, a recent study we performed indeed finds support for the merits of unconscious thinking for making judgments about who was guilty in a legal case (Ham & Van den Bos, 2008c). Finding evidence for these implications would also be especially relevant for decision making in contexts in which justice judgments are highly socially relevant and consequential, such as contexts of social conflict and negotiation or arbitration. Not only could future research study the consequences on unconscious thinking in these contexts, it could also analyze the way decisions are made in the day-to-day reality of those contexts, and the role of unconscious thinking in it. For example, current practices in social conflict negotiations might already include mechanisms to stimulate unconscious thinking, like for example including distractions in negotiation programs...
Furthermore, the current findings are in support of a new perspective on the way that justice judgments may be fruitfully formed. That is, next to the perspectives that characterize the way people form justice judgments as “moral reasoning,” and “moral intuition,” the current findings may suggest the following: Taking time to unconsciously think about whether just or unjust events have happened can lead to the most accurate justice judgments. So, it may be not so much conscious deliberation (cf. the moral reasoning approach) or fast unconscious processes (cf. the moral intuition approach), but taking some time to unconsciously process information about complex justice issues that may yield the most accurate justice judgments...
The implications of our findings for moral reasoning and intuition approaches may also highlight something important of the unconscious thinking literature, namely the possibility that unconscious thought processes may come in two forms. That is, on the one hand, there is fast unconscious thought that is suited best for judging relatively simple problems. Research of automatic social judgments studied these processes, and showed, for example, that people can draw quick and spontaneous inferences about simple social-justice relevant situations (Ham & Van den Bos, 2008a, 2008b ). On the other hand, there is slow unconscious thought that is suited best for judging complex situations (Dijksterhuis et al., 2006), an example being the current research. This new insight does not simply equate unconscious processing with fast processing and conscious processing with slow processing, as was implicit in the distinction between moral intuition and moral reasoning, but, rather, differentiates between fast unconscious processes and slow unconscious processes, and, furthermore, proposes the testable prediction that fast and slow unconscious processes may be suited best for simple and complex judgments, respectively. [...] So, what is the best way to make accurate justice judgments about a certain situation? The current research suggests that Lady Justice will not form the most accurate justice judgments through conscious deliberation or immediate judgments. Rather, our advice to her is to avoid thinking about a justice-related situation consciously and instead thereof to think about it unconsciously. Although the current research remains silent about what kind of thinking people actually use most in day-to-day life when forming justice judgments, it tells us what kinds of thinking they should be using to reach the most accurate judgments. Therefore, the next time you encounter a complex situation in which a justice judgment is required, do not deliberate on it consciously, but rather do not think about the issue at hand for a couple of minutes.