The adaptive unconscious, first coined by social psychologist Daniel Wegner in 2002, [1] is described as a set of mental processes that is able to affect judgement and decision-making, but is out of reach of the conscious mind. It is thought to be adaptive as it helps to keep the organism alive. [2] Architecturally, the adaptive unconscious is said to be unreachable because it is buried in an unknown part of the brain. This type of thinking evolved earlier than the conscious mind, enabling the mind to transform information and think in ways that enhance an organism's survival. It can be described as a quick sizing up of the world which interprets information and decides how to act very quickly and outside the conscious view. The adaptive unconscious is active in everyday activities such as learning new material, detecting patterns, and filtering information. It is also characterized by being unconscious, unintentional, uncontrollable, and efficient without requiring cognitive tools. Lacking the need for cognitive tools does not make the adaptive unconscious any less useful than the conscious mind as the adaptive unconscious allows for processes like memory formation, physical balancing, language, learning, and some emotional and personalities processes that includes judgement, decision making, impression formation, evaluations, and goal pursuing. Despite being useful, the series of processes of the adaptive unconscious will not always result in accurate or correct decisions by the organism. The adaptive unconscious is affected by things like emotional reaction, estimations, and experience and is thus inclined to stereotyping and schema which can lead to inaccuracy in decision making. The adaptive conscious does however help decision making to eliminate cognitive biases such as prejudice because of its lack of cognitive tools.
The adaptive unconscious is defined as different from conscious processing in a number of ways. It is faster, effortless, more focused on the present, and less flexible. [3] It is thought to be adaptive as it helps to keep us alive. [2] Processing information without us even realising then feeding any we do need to know to our conscious brain.
In other theories of the mind, the unconscious is limited to "low-level" activities, such as carrying out goals which have been decided consciously. In contrast, the adaptive unconscious is now thought to also be involved in "high-level" cognition such as goal-setting.
The theory of the adaptive unconscious was influenced by some of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's views on the unconscious mind. According to Freud, the unconscious mind stored a lot of mental content which needs to be repressed; however, the term adaptiveunconscious reflects the idea that much of what the unconscious does is actually beneficial to the organism, in closer accordance with Jung's thought. For example, its various processes have been streamlined through evolution to quickly evaluate and respond to patterns in an organism's environment. [4]
Malcolm Gladwell described intuition, not as an emotional reaction, but a very quick thinking. [5] He said that if an individual realized that a truck is about to hit him, there would be no time to think through all of his options and, to survive, he must rely on this kind of decision-making apparatus, which is capable of making very quick judgments based on little information. [6] Gladwell also cited another example in the case of a kouros acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. A team of scientists vouched for its authenticity but some historians, such as Thomas Hoving, instantly knew otherwise - that they felt an "intuitive repulsion" for the piece, which was eventually proved as fake. [7]
Intuition comes from tapping into the adaptive unconscious. The adaptive unconscious is that liminal zone between dreams and reality, what might be called a reciprocal of experiences, memories, and dreams. Working within the adaptive unconscious involves browsing through a series of sense impressions and making comparisons regarding a situation and using past experiences to dissolve sensory boundaries which then results in intuition. There is also a study that cited intuition as a result of the way our brain stores, processes and uses the information of our subconscious. [8] It becomes useful when reasoning and rationality provide no rapid answer. [8]
The debate over the existence of introspection began in the late 19th century with experiments involving placing people in different stimuli contexts and them thinking about their thoughts and feelings after. Similar experiments have continued since, all relying on asking the participant to think about how they feel and their thoughts. These research efforts have however been hampered by the fact it is currently impossible to know if they are actually accessing their unconscious as they do this, or if the information is just coming from their conscious mind. [2] This fundamental flaw makes experiments in this area less reliable in creating the debate over introspection.
More recent research suggests that many of our preferences, attitudes, and ideas come from the adaptive unconscious. However, subjects themselves do not realize this, and they are "unaware of their own unawareness". [9] People wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states. A subject is likely to give explanations for their behavior (i.e. their preferences, attitudes, and ideas), but the subject tends to be inaccurate in this "insight." The false explanations of their own behavior is what psychologists call the introspection illusion.
In some experiments, subjects provide explanations that are fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories, but not lies – a phenomenon called confabulation. This suggests that introspection is instead an indirect, unreliable process of inference. [10] It has been argued that this "introspection illusion" underlies a number of perceived differences between the self and other people, because people trust these unreliable introspections when forming attitudes about themselves but not about others. [11] [12] [13]
However, this theory of the limits of introspection has been highly controversial, and it has been difficult to test unambiguously how much information individuals get from introspection. [14] The difficulties in understanding the introspective method resulted in a lack of theoretical development of the mind and more into behaviourism. The difficulties of finding a method that worked (i.e. not self-reporting by the patient) mean there was a halt in this area of research until the cognitive revolution. Due to this the need to understand the unconscious mind increased. Psychologists started to focus on the limits of the conscious mind and more stimuli and learning paradigm focused experiments for the unconscious mind. [2] This helps understand the limitations of introspection or the lack of as some would argue.
The theory of introspection is highly controversial. This is due to research showing inconsistencies between our introspective reports and factors affecting our stimuli. This issue lead to a new way to study introspective access by using the adaptive unconsciousness. This is done by looking at the implicit-explicit relationship, specifically the differences between the two. Explicit processes involve cognitive resources and are done with awareness. On the other hand, implicit processes require at least one of the following, lack of intention, lack of management, reduced awareness of where the responses came from and finally high efficiency of processing. This shows the differences that occur between the two processes and the contention around the differences as they cannot be pinned down to one specific thing. [15] These differences between implicit and explicit factors is argued to be able to be used as evidence for introspection existence. [16] If implicit processes become weaker than explicit processes then it can result in larger differences between the two. This results in consequences for future information processing and the well-being of the person. However, if this occurs in the right conditions it can allow for implicit processing output to enter the conscious mind. This leads to a small self-insight into the adaptive unconscious allowing us to understand it more. [17]
Arguably, this argument of the independence of introspection existence based on the implicit-explicit relationship may actually be more conditional than originally thought. This view coincides with the idea that access to our unconsciousness is dependent on the competition between processes and their surrounding contexts. These contexts provide the association our stimuli have with certain aspects of society. For example, if you found pleasure in running, when running your cognitive processes either implicit or explicit would tell your unconscious you are feeling joy without you realising this was occurring. This could then be translated into the conscious mind. [17]
Many used to think most of our behaviours, thoughts, feelings all came from our conscious brain. However, as our understanding has grown it is obvious our adaptive unconscious does much more than we originally thought. Once we thought the creation of goals and self-reflection occurred consciously but now we realise its all in our unconscious. Our unconscious and conscious minds do have to work together though for us to continue efficiently functioning. We need to understand the dual system our brain uses between our adaptive unconscious and our conscious mind more. Analysing information, attitudes and feelings in the unconscious mind first which then contributes and creates our conscious versions of this. [2] The debate is no longer whether the adaptive unconscious exists but more which is more important in our everyday decision making? The adaptive unconscious or the conscious mind. Some would say it is becoming more and more apparent that our unconscious seems to be much more important than we originally thought especially compared to our conscious brain. The low-level processing we used to think our adaptive unconscious did we now realise may actually be the job of our conscious mind. [18] Our adaptive unconscious may actually be the power house in our brain making the important decisions and holding the important information. It does this all without us even realising.
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of internal and external existence. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debate by philosophers, theologians, and all of science. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of mind. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.
The unconscious mind consists of processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge, without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; gut feelings; inner sensing; inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition; and the ability to understand something instinctively, without any need for conscious reasoning. Intuitive knowledge tends to be approximate.
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's soul. Introspection is closely related to human self-reflection and self-discovery and is contrasted with external observation.
Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.
In philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experiences. It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking, and so forth. The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation: that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral, as each physical system can be explained purely by reference to the "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon.
In the philosophy of mind, the user illusion is a metaphor for a proposed description of consciousness that argues that conscious experience does not directly expose objective reality, but instead provides a simplified version of reality that allows humans to make decisions and act in their environment, akin to a computer desktop. According to this picture, our experience of the world is not immediate, as all sensation requires processing time. It follows that our conscious experience is less a perfect reflection of what is occurring, and more a simulation produced subconsciously by the brain. Therefore, there may be phenomena that exist beyond our peripheries, beyond what consciousness could create to isolate or reduce them.
The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one's own judgment. The term was created by Emily Pronin, a social psychologist from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, with colleagues Daniel Lin and Lee Ross. The bias blind spot is named after the visual blind spot. Most people appear to exhibit the bias blind spot. In a sample of more than 600 residents of the United States, more than 85% believed they were less biased than the average American. Only one participant believed that they were more biased than the average American. People do vary with regard to the extent to which they exhibit the bias blind spot. This phenomenon has been successfully replicated and it appears that in general, stronger personal free will beliefs are associated with bias blind spot. It appears to be a stable individual difference that is measurable.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) is Malcolm Gladwell's second book. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious: mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. It considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgment, and its pitfalls, such as prejudice and stereotypes.
In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process. Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of time to change with the forming of new habits. Dual process theories can be found in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. It has also been linked with economics via prospect theory and behavioral economics, and increasingly in sociology through cultural analysis.
Implicit cognition refers to cognitive processes that occur outside conscious awareness or conscious control. This includes domains such as learning, perception, or memory which may influence a person's behavior without their conscious awareness of those influences.
Peter Carruthers is a British-American philosopher and cognitive scientist working primarily in the area of philosophy of mind, though he has also made contributions to philosophy of language and ethics. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, an associate member of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, and a member of the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences.
In psychology, implicit memory is one of the two main types of long-term human memory. It is acquired and used unconsciously, and can affect thoughts and behaviours. One of its most common forms is procedural memory, which allows people to perform certain tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences; for example, remembering how to tie one's shoes or ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about those activities.
The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. The illusion has been examined in psychological experiments, and suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. These experiments have been interpreted as suggesting that, rather than offering direct access to the processes underlying mental states, introspection is a process of construction and inference, much as people indirectly infer others' mental states from their behaviour.
Structuralism in psychology is a theory of consciousness developed by Edward Bradford Titchener. This theory was challenged in the 20th century.
Neuroscience of free will, a part of neurophilosophy, is the study of topics related to free will using neuroscience and the analysis of how findings from such studies may impact the free will debate.
Unconscious thought theory (UTT) posits that the unconscious mind is capable of performing tasks outside of one's awareness, and that unconscious thought (UT) is better at solving complex tasks, where many variables are considered, than conscious thought (CT), but is outperformed by conscious thought in tasks with fewer variables. It was proposed by Ap Dijksterhuis and Loran Nordgren in 2006.
Unconscious cognition is the processing of perception, memory, learning, thought, and language without being aware of it.
Cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is a dual-process model of perception developed by Seymour Epstein. CEST is based around the idea that people operate using two separate systems for information processing: analytical-rational and intuitive-experiential. The analytical-rational system is deliberate, slow, and logical. The intuitive-experiential system is fast, automatic, and emotionally driven. These are independent systems that operate in parallel and interact to produce behavior and conscious thought.
Intuition in the context of decision-making is defined as a "non-sequential information-processing mode." It is distinct from insight and can be contrasted with the deliberative style of decision-making. Intuition can influence judgment through either emotion or cognition, and there has been some suggestion that it may be a means of bridging the two. Individuals use intuition and more deliberative decision-making styles interchangeably, but there has been some evidence that people tend to gravitate to one or the other style more naturally. People in a good mood gravitate toward intuitive styles, while people in a bad mood tend to become more deliberative. The specific ways in which intuition actually influences decisions remain poorly understood.
