Chris Frith: [...] the unconscious brain is very good at taking many things into account at the same time. We suspect that as soon as you start thinking about those things consciously, a brain system with very limited capacity is employed, which can concentrate on just a few items.

So where does conscious reasoning come into the picture? It is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made. And it is, after all, the only way we have to try to explain to other people why we made a particular decision. But given our lack of access to the brain processes involved, our justification is often spurious: a post-hoc rationalisation, or even a confabulation - a "story" born of the confusion between imagination and memory. [...]