Unconscious thoughts as a spur and halt on good financial decisioning making

Behavioural finance has, thus far, largely been based on applications of cognitive, consciously thought, finance, often based on evaluation of stylised games, or framed choices. Such an example is whether Linda is a feminist bank teller based on a few key indicators of her character. The unconscious mind, if mentioned at all, is portrayed as emotional; captured by phantastic objects, which threatens to induce the delusion of reality denial. Our paper reviews this portrayal of the unconscious, often associated with Richard Taffler, David Tucker and colleagues, and compares/contrasts it with a far more upbeat assessment of the unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer and his fellow researchers.Taffler portrays the unconscious as flighty, and potentially destructive, muse; moving us between a paranoid phase, PS, in a market up, like 1998-1999, and reality acceptance, during a depressive/integrated, D, phase, like 2000 or 2009.We strongly emphasise two themes. Firstly, the degree to which these two strands of literature are unified by a concern with decision-making under uncertainty rather than risk Gigerenzer (2018). Secondly, Gigerenzer and Taffler differ on the normative value of our unconscious lives as investors. For Gigerenzer the unconscious is largely a spur to good investment choices, for Taffler and colleagues it is largely a halt. Both representations contain their truth. But the degree of truth depends on the investment context.Indeed a central difference between the Taffler and Gigerenzer's view is that for Taffler and Tucker the source of problems in financial decision-making are all in the mind, with many of the problems arising when our, wellreasoned, conscious thought is overthrown by unconscious desires. But for Gigerenzer most problems investors face derive from a poor match between their cognitive process and the context into which it is deployed.

Automated summary

This paper compares the contrasting views of Taffler, Tucker, and Gigerenzer on the unconscious. Taffler sees the unconscious as an obstacle to investment decisions, while Gigerenzer believes it plays a role in promoting good investment choices. The paper emphasizes the importance of decision-making under uncertainty and the influence of the investment context on the reality of the unconscious.