by Bor, Daniel
What does all of this show about the unconscious mind? It falls far short of showing that we can learn relatively complex information in the absence of consciousness, and for very similar reasons to the paradigm by Dijksterhuis shown in the previous section.
In order to learn anything at all about the strings of letters, we still have to be very conscious of the letters and attend closely to them when we first see them. If we’re distracted, so that we are no longer reading the strings—even if we’re staring right at them—then we learn absolutely nothing.
What’s more, when we’re asked just to memorize the letter strings in the first half of the experiment, most of us will be doing a lot more. Because of our exceptional consciousness, we are constantly looking for patterns; so in this instance, we just can’t help noticing things like, “These strings always end with M—I wonder if that means anything.” These thoughts quickly fade from awareness as we’re trying to perform the main task of memorizing these difficult sets of letters, but perhaps these observations converge in our minds and allow us, consciously, to learn a little bit of the grammatical structure at a time, to pull us above chance. So, in other words, as with the Dijksterhuis experiments, with this experimental setup we cannot rule out the very real possibility that the structure is being learned consciously, at least to some degree, even if we later forget the conscious progress we originally made.
At the same time, these kinds of experiments are certainly not arguing for an unconscious advantage. There’s no doubt that, had the initial instructions for these letter strings been to attempt to spot the rules that govern the sequence of letters, instead of simply to memorize them, subjects would have been considerably better at later deciding which letter strings obeyed the initial rules.
In many instances in life we at least semiconsciously build up these little observations, these tiny chunks of knowledge. Afterward, when we are not consciously recalling the rules, but only, at best, feeling a sense of familiarity, the initial groundwork nevertheless allows for proficiency on the task. Again, tennis is a good example. We start by consciously practicing the forehand stroke, section by section, and eventually, when we’re proficient, we’re no longer aware of all the little rules that make up what we’re doing—all we need be aware of is the overall chunk: forehand. In fact, we might have virtually no memory of the learning process, but that has no bearing on our quality of play. Consciousness, therefore, may be required for any form of complex learning to occur, but once we’ve assimilated the task and the program is written, we merely have to execute it automatically. And if the heavy hardware of consciousness is accidentally reengaged on the habit, it often merely gets in the way.
And, of course, if the structure of some collection of information is particularly complicated, or especially hierarchical, then we absolutely need full-on consciousness in order to spot these patterns and learn them. Studies have shown that the unconscious mind is unable to cope, for instance, with most logical operations, with grasping cause and effect, with almost any type of sequence, with any mathematics beyond things learned by rote, such as multiplication tables, or with any of the various social and cultural facets of life we need to acquire in order to succeed.
So are there any sorts of tasks that the unconscious mind is unequivocally superior at performing, compared with the conscious mind? There are a collection of experiments that match this remit, albeit in a somewhat disappointing way: The unconscious mind can be superior when we consciously go a little overboard in our search for patterns. Just as pigeons can show superstitious behavior, by dancing for food that is delivered regularly regardless of their actions, so can humans entertain superstitious beliefs. But we can take this to exceptional levels, not only with astrology beliefs and the like, but also in more formal ways in the lab.
Imagine that you’re sitting in front of a computer monitor, and you have to predict whether a light will flash on screen to the right or the left. That’s the only task there is, but there are very many trials. In actual fact, eight out of ten times the lights will flash on the right, but in a random, unpredictable way. What’s the best strategy here? If you’ve learned this pattern optimally, you’ll respond to the right every single time, and end up with a score of 80 percent. That is what animals such as rats do when a correct answer leads to a food reward. But it is not what most humans do. Sometimes we as a species are just too clever for our own good. When we perform this task, we constantly look for some secret pattern, some hidden message in the apparently random stream. So, first of all, we lose marks by testing quite a few convoluted ideas about the pattern of the lights, most of which are wrong. Then, when we roughly understand that the lights flash on the right 80 percent of the time, we decide to second-guess it, and 8 out of 10 times we predict the right, but 20 percent of the time we predict the left. This one strategy actually lowers our score to 68 percent on average, because one-fifth of the time we’re picking a side very unlikely to elicit the light flash. So the lowly rat outperforms humans on this task by a healthy 12 percent. What’s more, if patients with damage to the lateral prefrontal cortex attempt this task, there is provisional evidence that they don’t generate the usual wacky, wrong theories but instead perform optimally, just like the rats. This brain region is probably the area most intimately associated with awareness.
In many ways, though, this form of unconscious advantage is a cheat, because researchers could easily explain statistics and probabilities to the volunteers and encourage them to modify their behavior, so that they instead would behave optimally and their conscious abilities would catch up with their unconscious minds.
But to me these experiments highlight a key detail: These spurious suppositions are a litmus test for the extent of consciousness. Although these mistaken beliefs are essentially failures of our cognitive system, they are also a reflection of just how many patterns we can spot, and how successfully we can understand the world around us. So when the pigeon twirls around for food, that is potentially a marker of minimal consciousness, and when a human believes in astrology, that is actually, strangely, a solid indication of a substantive form of consciousness—no other type of animal could have such a spectacularly irrational schema as astrology, and there is also no chance for our simplistic unconscious minds to generate these intricate, rich false theories. Such elaborate failures as astrology, or, more pathologically, conditions like schizophrenia, are perhaps the price we pay for our exceptional consciousness, our deep hunger for wisdom, and our incredibly successful ability to detect profound real patterns, greatly furthering science and technology in the process.
EAT POPCORN: THE UNCONSCIOUS TAKES CONTROL
We’ve arrived at the conclusion that the unconscious mind is the dullard at the party: There may be a few genuine experiments that appear to show an unconscious advantage, but these cannot rule out the initial powerful gaze of consciousness drawing out the meaning in the string of data. If this isn’t the explanation, then instead any apparent unconscious advantage can be explained by consciousness occasionally overactively latching onto a specious pattern—a potentially temporary glitch that our uncreative unconscious isn’t capable of generating.
And as the evidence mounts that unconscious processing is limited to simpler thoughts, with little or no structure, the argument for the role of consciousness in complex information processing, especially involving layered meaning and deep patterns, is in turn strengthened. If we are to absorb anything complex, we need to direct our attentional gaze firmly in the right direction and consciously identify the relevant features.
But the question of what we are consciously or unconsciously capable of learning is quite distinct from which of these sides of our minds usually controls our choices. So who holds sway over the lion’s share of our decisions in life—our conscious or unconscious minds?
The most famous early experiments attempting to answer this question investigated whether our decisions can easily be manipulated by subliminal messages. This field was
spectacularly brought to the public eye in 1957 when James Vicary, a market researcher, conducted a simple experiment, which he related in great detail. While cinema-goers watched a movie, brief frames were inserted for a tiny fraction of a second (too fast to spot) ordering the viewers to “EAT POPCORN” or “DRINK COKE.” Vicary related how these instructions appeared every 5 seconds throughout one film, every time it was presented over a six-week period, to 45,699 participants in total, at a movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Vicary claimed that these messages raised sales of popcorn by 57.7 percent and Coke by 18.1 percent. A year later, the CIA produced a report describing how to exploit this important result for their own aims, and soon such subliminal additions to media were deemed illegal in the United States. Meanwhile, the notion that we can be heavily influenced by such brief flashing instructions was firmly fixed in popular culture. Unfortunately, Vicary never properly published these results, and five years later he freely admitted that he had totally fabricated the data! In fact, despite considerable efforts to replicate these original bogus findings, there’s no evidence that such subliminal messages influence our behavior.12
But unwittingly, Vicary was, in some ways, very much on the right track. We hardly need science to tell us that our decisions rarely resemble ideal, enlightened, conscious choices. If we could make our own decisions in an entirely objective way, as if we were deliberating slowly and carefully on behalf of a complete stranger, we might always be able to choose the long-term constructive option and never opt for the short-term destructive one. We’d never overeat, always exercise properly, never be ruled by anger, always pause and analyze the alternatives, and avoid impulsively choosing the toxic route. We would weigh decisions based on the best scientific evidence, instead of a hunch—or, worse, a biased, dogmatic fragment of conjecture—and we’d always inject an appropriate level of skepticism into our decisions, instead of rushing headlong into believing a completely irrational suggestion. Unfortunately, even the best and brightest of us chronically fail to live up to this ideal. Why are we so very bad at making decisions?
In the main, our paths in life, from the trivial to the momentous, are heavily shaped by evolution. We can’t escape our biological heritage, which has been designed, over many millions of years, to keep us alive. We overeat because normally, in nature, food is scarce, so when there is a plentiful supply, the desire to “stock up” is incredibly powerful. We suffer heavy stress, even when there is not even a remote threat to our lives, because we are built to strive desperately in a dangerous world. We are also engineered to impress—to rise socially as far as we can—partly to secure more resources, but also to find sexual mates. Sex is one of the main driving forces of adult life, because, after all, passing on our own brand of genetic ideas is the main evolutionary “purpose” of our existence. (It is also the area where we probably make the most profound, life-shaping mistakes, from choosing the wrong person to marry, to having affairs, and so on.) In all these decisions, it regularly feels as if we have little say in the matter—that we simply feel these urges and act on them, like a passive traveler within our own bodies. We may even aggressively question our poor decisions, but feel powerless to stop them, or else supplant these doubts with fatuous, after-the-fact justifications, which nevertheless somehow seem to pacify our pricked conscience.
Science puts some meat onto the bones of this impression that our unconscious minds are the engine room of decision, with some stark, disturbing results.
When I was an undergraduate, I learned of many fascinating experiments, but there was one seemingly trivial, straightforward study that I actually found most striking, even disturbing, because of its widespread implications for human psychology and free will. You are told that you will have to perform an exercise—sit against the wall without a chair, with your thighs and calves at right angles. This is easy to begin with, but after a minute or two, even the muscles of very strong, fit people will start to burn. You’re informed that you’re actually earning money for a relative, and the longer you hold your position, the more money they will get. The cash sums are pretty trivial, equating to perhaps 30 cents every 20 seconds, but that doesn’t stop volunteers from trying hard to earn a bit of extra money for their families. Now we share half our genetic identity with our offspring, parents, and siblings; a quarter with our grandparents, aunts and uncles, and nephews and nieces; and an eighth with our first cousins. The people in these studies, carried out across cultures and including both men and women, all behaved the same way—they held their painful position for an amount of time that related to the closeness of their relative. So the amount of time they could hold the position for themselves was the longest, followed by the time it was held for siblings, then nephews, etc., and finally, the shortest time and most measly payout went to cousins. Volunteers were not at all aware that they were following this pattern, but some part of their unconscious minds was presumably making an assessment of how many genes their relative shared with them, and based on this knowledge, calculating how much suffering to apportion for each relative’s reward.
Countless examples, in a similar vein, exist to demonstrate the frightening extent by which our choices can be unconsciously, irrationally influenced. The Israeli Nobel laureate in economics and psychologist Daniel Kahneman knows better than most just how many complex, potentially competing sources can, under the surface, contribute to any eventual decision. When he was a Jewish boy of around seven years old in Nazi-occupied France, he once was distracted playing with a Christian friend and accidentally stayed out past the 6 p.m. curfew for Jews. Turning his sweater inside out to hide his Star of David, he began to walk home quickly. Then he saw a soldier approach—and not just any soldier. This soldier was wearing the ominous black uniform of the SS, the notorious Nazi paramilitary force that carried out many of the atrocities of the Holocaust. And he was staring intently at the young Daniel, who was speeding up to try to walk past him—but in vain. The SS soldier beckoned the boy over, but instead of subjecting him to the fate of other Jews who had broken the curfew, he picked the boy up affectionately, hugged him, and spoke warmly to him in German, completely failing to notice the thick Jewish symbol on the inside of his sweater. He showed the boy a picture in his wallet of his own son, and even, in an ultimate act of irony, gave this Jewish boy some money to help him on his way. This event firmly placed Kahneman on the path of psychology as he sought to understand the many sources of our choices.
A few decades later, by now a well-established psychologist, Kahneman coauthored, with his longtime collaborator, Amos Tversky, a classic, damning, and comprehensive paper outlining a variety of ways in which our everyday thoughts and decisions can be biased, revealing them to be facetious and arbitrary on a regular basis. For instance, say volunteers are asked the question: “What is the percentage of African countries in the United Nations?” They are then shown a kind of wheel of fortune, which is swung to land on any number between 1 and 100. This wheel has nothing to do with anything, really—it just spews out a random number that the volunteers observe. But if the wheel lands on the number 10, then the volunteers’ median estimate becomes 25 percent of African countries, and if it lands on 65, the median estimate is 45 percent. This unconscious anchoring of our choice of answer is entirely random, but nevertheless very significantly affects our guess.
All of this indicates that consciousness might well be designed to make those big innovations, and uncover those deep patterns to the world, but that it is, by default, more a slave to our decisions than its master. Biologically, we are built to survive and reproduce, and the unconscious part of our brains does all it can to steer us toward these simple goals, with our conscious minds usually just a superlative servant of those unconscious aims.
UNCONSCIOUS DECISIONS AND THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE
Although there is a bleakness to this perspective, there is some research to point to an even more disturbing picture, one where all decisions are necessarily unconscious, even when we believe
them to be made entirely within the remit of awareness.
In the early 1980s Benjamin Libet demonstrated this fact with sufficient clarity that it has unnerved psychologists and philosophers ever since. Participants, while being scanned with EEG electrodes, were asked to lift a finger spontaneously, whenever they wished, and state exactly when they had the urge to do this. Because talking is another kind of movement, they couldn’t just say “now” to indicate the timing of their decision, as this would have its own movement initiation process, meaning all answers would be delayed by the time it took to say “now”—probably an extra third of a second. So Libet designed a cunning means by which subjects could accurately report the time of their decision without affecting the rest of the experiment: Subjects would watch a special clock that had the usual circle of numbers, but only a single rapidly rotating hand. When they decided to act, they would note the nearest number to the clock hand at that precise time. Then, after completing the movement, they would report this number.
Using this special clock method, Libet could now calculate when each conscious decision to move a finger occurred. He first found that the volunteers were making this decision about a fifth of a second before they actually moved a finger. No surprises there. But the EEG electrodes picked up a strikingly different story—brain activity relating to the preparation to move a finger began to ramp up a good third of a second, on average, before the subjects consciously believed they had decided to move—and sometimes this brain marker was detected a whole second beforehand.
Does this mean that even our simplest, most humdrum choices are decided in our unconscious minds, and we are mere spectators, only believing that we are in control because our brains are designed to make us think like this? Many scientists and philosophers have tried to wriggle out of this uncomfortable conclusion. The main author of the above experiment, Libet, claimed that we still have free will, because we always have the conscious ability to veto any internal choices we make. Unfortunately, there is an increasing weight of evidence tipping the scales toward a similar unconscious source of even this decision to veto our responses.
