A psychology study about consumer choices published in last week's Science [1] journal found that if you have a big, complex decision to make, like buying a house or a car, you're likely to benefit from sleeping on it.

Your unconscious will do a much better job of sifting and prioritizing than your conscious mind and pro/con lists will. But if you have a small choice––what kind of chocolate to buy, for instance––it’s best to make it through logical reasoning. The Dutch researchers who created the study of 80 student volunteers call this the “Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect.” “Contrary to conventional wisdom,” they wrote in their abstract for Science [2], “it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing.”

“Psychologists have known for years that people process an enormous amount of information unconsciously,” wrote Benedict Carey for The New York Times [3] on the study, “for example, when they hear their names pop up in a conversation across the room that they were not consciously listening to. But the new report suggests that people take this wealth of under-the-radar information, combine it with deliberately studied facts and impressions and then make astute judgments that they would not otherwise form.”

Among many experiments in the study, researchers asked students to choose from four cars based on a list of attributes for each. Then some students were asked to quietly consider their choice, and others were distracted by a request to solve anagrams. The fewer the items to consider, the more the quiet thinkers chose the best-functioning automobile. The longer the list of attributes, the better the distracted students did at making the best choice.

It’s interesting to look at this in light of Malcolm Gladwell’s amalgam of insta-choice studies in his best-selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking [4]. It seems to both contradict (he doesn’t advise sleeping on things) his conclusions and back them up (the unconscious mind knows what it’s doing). It’s not exactly clear how we can apply the Dutch study to our lives outside of consuming just yet. But rather than agonize over lists and options, it certainly sounds less painful to learn what you can, let go, and trust that you’re making right choice, especially about monumental purchasing decisions.

Image: Caty Bartholomew for The New York Times