Information Overload 139
single person or a group of five people and (b) justify their
decision. The results of the study suggested that people
adopted implicit decision-making principles to guide their
choice but were unable to provide an explicit justification
that corresponded to this principle.
In one variation of the “trolley problem,” participants
learned that the train would run over a group of five indi-
viduals who were trapped on the track. However, on a bridge
directly above the train track was a heav yset man whose
weight would be sufficient to stop the train if participants
shoved him off the bridge. The participants were then asked
whether it would be permissible to push this man off the
bridge and thereby kill him in the service of saving the lives
of five other people. Most participants declared that it
wouldn’t be permissible, and the pattern of results indicated
that these participants were appealing to an implicit princi-
ple: the proximity principle. This principle holds that a person
is less likely to save a larger number of people by harming a
smaller number of people if he or she must get physically
close to them to do so. Because saving the lives of the five
people would require participants to physically push the
heav yset man off the bridge, they were less inclined to con-
sider such an action permissible, even though it would save
lives. Most of the participants, however, didn’t give an
explicit justification that aligned with the proximity princi-
ple. It seemed as if their conscious thoughts were at odds
with their unconscious cognitive processes.
So, you might wonder, how does all of this relate to
anxiety? This is an excellent question that has received a
great amount of attention in the scientific literature.
Empirical evidence has suggested that unconscious atten-
tional process underlie emotions, which isn’t too hard to