It's a rather interesting read (and the anecdote about a Dutch researcher's encounter with the cereal aisle in an American supermarket is hilarious. Well, at least by research-paper standards.)
The point is that our conscious attention is very limited and we cannot simultaneously focus on all the variables in a complex decision. However, it appears our unconscious is not quite so limited, and can perform more complex weightings of many factors. (The paper describes several experiments designed to tease out the parameters of how this works.)
It's really interesting to see concrete confirmation of advice from various people ( and personal experience) that letting a decision rest (or sleeping on it, or however you want to describe it) does help, and aids in drawing out the relevant factors. (Found via this blog entry focusing on the house-buying example in the paper.)
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I've noticed a similar effect with liking things. Here's an example:
I remember playing a song I really liked for a friend of mine. He hated the song. A while later (weeks or months), we were just hanging out, playing CDs. The CD with the song he hated was in and that song came on. He was like "hey, this is a good song!".
(Note that I've also seen it go the other way.)
They talk in the paper about how there has to be an explicit goal for unconscious decision thinking, so maybe this doesn't quite fit in with what they're talking about, but whatever.
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