The Head, Heart, and Soul: Lay Theories of Decision Conflict and the Role of the True Self

Which mental process reveals one’s authentic preference—deliberative reasoning or one’s gut impulses? The existing literature offers conflicting answers to this question: Some research suggests that people generally see deliberation as more fundamental, while other work suggests that people see intuition as more fundamental. This paper argues that belief in a true self provides a unifying framework to explain when participants will attribute one’s authentic preference to either System 1 or System 2. In line with predictions made by our theory, the results from four experiments (N=3,399 American adults) show that attributions about others’ authentic preferences vary predictably across normative and non-normative contexts. Further, we show that the more participants report believing in a good true self, the more their judgments about others adhere to a predictable pattern; and, directly manipulating information about a target’s true self changes people’s judgments about a target’s authentic preferences. By integrating theories of decision conflict and existing research on the true self, this work advances our understanding of how people reason about others’ minds, revealing how lay theories about identity can systematically shape social prediction and judgment.