The New Unconscious (SOCIAL COGNITION & SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE)

The Rest of the Iceberg

It is almost two centuries since philosophers and the forerunners of modern psychology first began to realize that there are a great many psychological processes that run below the horizon of conscious awareness. These observations and insights reached their height with Sigmund Freud and his successors, and the notion that many of our thoughts and actions are the fruits of unconscious processes entered the mainstream over a hundred years ago.

But academic psychology was never quite so sure. Freud, Jung, Adler and the others had constructed an untestable metatheory that began to fall off the radar of most academic psychologists. Yet psychotherapists continued to use techniques informed by concepts of unconscious motivations, and some empirical research confirmed the value of the approach. Though the value of some of the therapies did little to confirm the existence of unconscious processes.

The problem of the existence of the unconscious was compounded by the problems of definitions: some spoke of a "personal" unconscious; Jung and his followers introduced the notion of a "collective" unconscious, but then many writers began to use the words "unconscious" and "subconscious' interchangeably. That obfuscation was compounded by many popular writers who expanded the concept of the "subconscious" to include biological functions operating below the level of conscious awareness. So then everything from the beating of the heart to the metabolic fires of the mitochondria were all subsumed under the term "subconscious." The problem with any overly broad definition is that it ceases to be a useful descriptor that we can use to make predictions to advance our understanding.

Yet another attempt to clarify non-conscious processes was to introduce the notion of a "preconscious" to describe some of the psychological processes that occur before or during conscious events, to differentiate them from the activities of the autonomic nervous systems and the interactions of the brain and nervous system with the immune and endocrine systems. One influential model is to differentiate three major "levels:"
1. The true unconscious, which is so far below awareness that it can never be directly known by introspection, but only inferred
2. The preconscious that contains latent procedural knowledge
3. The subconscious level of awareness, which includes hypnotic and dissociative states

In the last few years cognitive psychologists have re-entered the arena, and created models and methods to try to make sense of unconscious processes. This is not some dry academic exercise, but an enterprise that reaches to the heart of mind/body interactions ad may provide explanation for some of the most baffling of human actions and reactions.

This excellent book is divided into an introduction, followed by five sections and nineteen chapters:

Introduction: Becoming Aware of the New Unconscious: James S. Uleman

Section 1: Fundamental Questions
1. Who is the Controller of Controlled Processes?: Daniel M. Wegner
2. Bypassing the Will: Towards Demystifying the Nonconscious Control of Social Behavior: John A. Bargh

Section 2: Basic Mechanisms
3. The Interaction of Emotion and Cognition: The Relation Between the Human Amygdala and Cognitive Awareness: Elizabeth A. Phelps
4. The power of the subliminal: On Subliminal Persuasion and Other Potential Applications: Ap Dijksterhuis, Henk Aarts, and Pamela K. Smith
5. Nonintentional Similarity Processing: Art Markman and Dedre Gentner
6. The Mechanics of Imagination: Automaticity and Control in Counterfactual Thinking: Neal Rose, Lawrence J. Sanna, and Adam D. Galinsky
7. Compensatory Automaticity: Unconscious Volition is not an Oxymoron: Jack Glaser and John F. Kihlstrom
8. Non Conscious Control and Implicit Working Memory: Ran R. Hassin

Section 3: Intention and Theory of Mind
9. Folk Theory of Mind: Conceptual Foundations of Human Social Cognition: Bertram F. Malle
10. The development of the intention concept: From the observable world to the unobservable mind: Jodie A. Baird and Janet W. Astington
11. Theory of Mind: Conscious Attribution and Spontaneous Trait Inference: Angeline S. Lillard and Lori Skibbe

Section 4: Perceiving and Engaging Others
12. The Glimpsed World: Unintended Communication and Unintended Perception: Y. Susan Choi, Heather M. Gray, and Nalini Ambady
13. Beyond the Perception-Behavior Link: The Ubiquitous Utility and Motivational Moderators of Nonconscious Mimicry: Tanya L. Chartrand, William W. Maddux, and Jessica L. Lakin
14. Implicit Impressions: James S. Uleman, Steven L. Blader, and Alexander Todorov
15. Attitudes as Accessibility Bias: Dissociating Automatic Controlled Processes: B. Keith Payne, Larry L. Jacoby, and Alan J. Lambert
16. The Unconscious Relational Self: Susan M. Anderson, Inga Reznik, and Noah S. Glassman

Section 5: Self-Regulation
17. The Control of the Unwanted: Peter M. Gollwitzer, Ute C. Bayer, and Kathleen C. McCulloch
18. Motivational Sources of Unintended Thought: Irrational Intrusions or Side Effects of Rational Strategies?: E. Tory Higgins
19. Going Beyond the Motivation Given: Self-Control and Situational Control over Behavior: Yaacov Trope and Ayelet Fishbach

Despite the number of authors, the editors have done an excellent job of maintaining a consistent style and readability, and there is remarkably little overlap between the chapters.

If you are looking for the best book so far on unconscious processes, I highly recommend this one.



Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

A fascinating, in-depth look at the state of the field in cognitive science on unconsciousness

Is consciousness all that it's cracked up to be? For example, even if Dan Dennett's explanation of consciousness in "Consciousness Explained" is correct, what of it?

If, to riff on the New Age urban legend that we only use 10 percent of our brains, it turns out that only 10 percent of our mental activity is conscious, then Dennett hasn't explained very much.

But, the idea that much of our mental activity is unconscious is scary to many people. This includes not just John and Jane Does, but many educated people and even many cognitive scientists. It's of a partial piece, at least, with fears over the lack of free will. On that subject, note that even a Dennett, while denying the existence of a Cartesian Central Meaner, has spilled ink enough for two whole books illogically continuing to defend the existence of free will.

Some parts of fears of unconscious mental behavior touch on its free will aspects. A fair amount do. Probably the second biggest fear behind worries about unconscious mental activity is the risk that humans will look more, well, animalistic.

And that's precisely what "The New Unconscious" addresses.

Without any of its authors putting percentages on conscious versus unconscious mental activity, the cognitive science essays collected here ask -- and in large degree answer -- just what all is happening in our minds out of the reach of our own selves.

Does subliminal programming work? Yes, to a moderate to modest extent, depending on the exact goals of specific subliminal ideas. At the same time, no, if it's on New Ageish self-help audio tapes; to the degree subliminal programming works, it works far better with visual than with audio programming.

Related to that, do various forms of unconscious priming -- such as priming one toward certain emotional or belief states, or reinforcing old ones -- work? The answer is a pretty strong yes. Sometimes, as in how racial attitudes can be effective, this is somewhat scary, yet challenging to national issues of sociology, indicating that at least some change in racial attitudes in America is in fact, pardon the pun, only skin deep.

Can unconscious thoughts and processes be controlled? The answer appears to be yes. Does this mean we have unconscious free will? The authors of the main study in this area of the book say yes. They don't answer, though, how that would square with the absence of a Central Meaner, and whether it might not imply an Unconscious Central Meaner. I say it does, until the authors further develop their idea. However, that's just their theory of unconscious free will. Unless one believes that lack of a conscious central meaner is some weird form of an emergent property, I don't see how unconscious free will, let alone an implied unconscious Cartesian Meaner, can actually exist. I charge that they don't, and that Jack Glaser and John Kihlstrom need to do more work.

But that's not all in here. Tying in to Malcolm Gladwell, the relative accuracy of thin-slice, quick-slice judgments of other people has been clinically upheld.

The power of assimilating to other people's mannerisms and becoming unconscious mimics has also been demonstrated. Ditto on mimicry of emotional affect, similarity judgments and other things.

Our minds are less our own than we thought.

Of course, with no Cartesian Meaner, they're really not "our" minds anyway.