Our every day thoughts and moods are derived by a combination of our conscious and unconscious mind. At any given moment we are generally induced by an automated process known as the cognitive unconscious. Richard Restack reveals how we are majorly influenced by external factors that without our awareness alter our cognitive unconscious mind and determine our personal attributes: trust, love, ethics and memory. Neuroscientists are currently studying these attributes with the help of advanced imaging devices capable of measuring brain activity. During the first half of the twenty-first century, neuroscientists’ understanding of the brain will revolutionize our behavior with developments such brain imaging which provide snapshots to our brain’s natural occurrences, discoveries which are even influencing specialists in fields not associated with brain study. Picture a future where we will be mainly controlled by our society – marketing and advertising programs based on brain scans to predict consumer interest in products, campaigns using brain-image profiles to determine what political candidate we are most likely to vote for, tests utilizing advanced neurotools to assess why we are romantically attracted to some people yet repelled by others, and even neuroscience-based chemical brain enhancers inducing us to insatiably consume specific products.
Over the past two hundred years, neuroscientists have studied the brain in isolation of other external factors, until recent research confirmed that biological and social factors must also be taken into heavy consideration in order to accurately comprehend behavior and emotions. The brain’s functioning is directly affected by social contexts. Social demands, thought patterns, stress, excitement and other mental activities affect our brain function and consequently our “blood flow, electrical discharges and magnetic field.” A common functional brain imaging technique known as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) measures our visual, frontal and motor areas. Most of the things we do involve a balance between controlled and automatic processing.
When we are overwhelmed with too much automatic processing we tend to become impulsive, and when we use too much controlled processing we become indecisive. Automatic processing involves thought not accompanied by effort, which is why we fail to justify or explain our impressions, perceptions or immediate intuitions. On the other hand, in a controlled process, thoughts follow a sequential pattern where we are consciously aware of our actions and can explain our thoughts to others.
Neuroscientists argue that it is more effective to exert less mental effort by letting “the brain be the brain” and allowing it to work at its own pace. Although we may believe we are being more accurate when we force ourselves to memorize something new, we are actually diminishing efficiency. Multiple choice tests prove this rule, as numerous studies show people’s original answer is most likely to be correct and additional thinking may lead to the introduction of uncertainty and error. For this reason, students are encouraged to quickly move on to the next question after they respond, as lingering in conscious thought may prove detrimental.
Our cognitive unconscious plays a crucial role in the development and evolution of neuroscience. Paul Fletcher, a well-known British psychiatrist, also proved automatic thinking is more effective by observing the brain’s activity with an FMRI test. Fletcher instructed his volunteers to push one of four boxes on a computer screen when the particular box was highlighted. The group that was unaware of the pattern was instructed to push the highlighted button as fast as they could without making errors; their response was more accurate as they continued the activity. The volunteers were later told about the pattern and asked to memorize it and their response was ultimately slower and less accurate. To summarize, the test showed people who think too much about a particular outcome perform weaker than those who do not place conscious effort. In other words, because most of our knowledge exists beyond our conscious awareness, we have an implicit knowledge that explains how at times we can do things without describing how we did them. Once an activity becomes routine our response occurs automatically, however when we have to make a decision or learn something new we use our controlled processes.
We usually have feelings of ownership and independence over our actions. We strongly believe our actions are produced from our own interest, dreams and desires. We rarely think our actions originate from outside agents. Nevertheless, the link between our consciousness and our awareness is a complicated arrangement. An experiment was carried by Édouard Claparede, a famous Swiss neurologist, on a patient who lost her short term memory in an accident. She was unable to remember any experience happening minutes earlier. Claparede wanted to see if she could remember intense impressions so he grabbed her hand and pinched her with a hidden pin between his fingers. Minutes later, she forgot she had felt pain, but when he tried to grab her hand the second time she pulled back with a reflex reaction, unaware why she had reacted that way. She could unconsciously recognize events, places and people that she couldn’t consciously recall as memory.
Another test that further highlights the power of our subconscious can be seen through a simple experiment with index cards. If you sit far away from another person, and ask him to read very dim letters that she can’t recognize, her response will be correct more often than if she were guessing. Now picture someone who shows you a screen of visible Chinese ideographs and even though your unfamiliar with Chinese you must guess if the word expresses a “good” or “bad” concept. You later realize your results weren’t random, they were directly related to human faces expressing happiness and anger which was flashed 4 milliseconds preceding the ideograph. Although you cannot consciously recall the faces, the experiment’s results prove the faces unconsciously guided your judgment. The experiment was later done by flashing the faces slowly and you’re asked to ignore them, in which case they don’t affect your answer. Subsequent research proved that subconsciously perceived information has a more powerful effect on human emotion than does conscious information. Our subconscious perceives things that we are consciously unable to witness; and the information leads to automatic reactions which are out of our control. Thus, although you may believe you are acting freely, your actions might be a response to someone else’s caprice.
Many times our actions originate outside our awareness; consciousness plays a small role on how we behave in different situations; which is why we cannot always honestly reason and explain our actions. Although we usually claim ownership over actions; Benjamin Libet, a pioneer in the field of human consciousness, revealed that “the brain decides to act prior to any conscious decision.” Although we believe our thought patterns cause action, it appears that “the brain creates both the thought and the action simultaneously,” thus our brains know our decisions before we do.
Research by psychologist Roy F. Baumeister proved we are not as efficient when we ‘multitask’ or perform several tasks at once because “acts of conscious self-control in one area interfere with our ability to exert control in another.”
We incessantly try to give plausible causes for our actions, especially with emotional responses. When we feel sad, for example, we tend to blame something or someone as if it caused the feeling. After noticing a feeling, the verbal system in the left hemisphere tries to attribute the emotion to a cause. In reality, we end up accepting any explanation we give to ourselves as true, although this merely reveals a selection by our left hemisphere among other possibilities. In effect, we are usually misled in order to project a positive self-image to ourselves.
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