We would all like to think of ourselves as good decision makers. For truly difficult decisions, we may spend a lot of time deliberating. Yet, for many decisions (some of them quite important) we seem to have formed preferences even before we have really worked through the pros and cons of the decision. Somehow, we seem to have preferences that are being driven by factors that fall outside our awareness.
Last post, I talked about one unconscious factor that may affect those preferences. When something is familiar, it is often liked more than something that is unfamiliar. What is making that happen?
Quite a bit of work suggests that accessibility is important for preferences. Accessibility is the speed that some though comes to mind. The easier it is for you to be able to think about an object, the more that you will like it. Research by a number of people including Ayelet Fishbach, John Bargh, Arie Kruglanski, and their many colleagues has examined this relationship.
What does it mean for a concept to come to mind easily? In order for you to think about a concept, you must already have it stored in your memory. For example, you cannot think about tomato sauce unless you already know about it. Most of the time, you are probably not thinking about tomato sauce. If you are watching a movie about space aliens, then it would be disruptive (and more than a little strange) if you suddenly started thinking about tomato sauce. So, while you are watching this movie, the concept of tomato sauce is hard for you to retrieve from your memory. When you are in the grocery store, the situation is more conducive to thinking about tomato sauce, and so it is easier for you to call this concept to mind.
The thoughts you have about the world can also influence how easily a concept comes to mind. If you are a smoker, then the more you need to smoke, the more easily thoughts about cigarettes come to mind. These thoughts about cigarettes will then make it more likely that you will choose to smoke a cigarette.
