3. Vocabulary
• Schema- mental structures that organize our
knowledge about the social world (p. 49)
• Accessibility- the extent to which schemas
and concepts are at the forefront of people’s
minds and are therefore likely to be used
when making judgments…
• Priming- the process by which recent
experiences increase the accessibility of a
schema, trait, or concept
5. How well do we know ourselves?
• Why do we not seem to know
ourselves very well in many
circumstances?
• Answer: a large portion of the
human mind is “unconscious.”
• There are two views on the
nature of the ‘unconscious’-
the old, Freudian view, and a
newer version from cognitive
science, I will refer to as ‘the
cognitive unconscious.’
6. The ‘Freudian’ Unconscious
• Sigmund Freud was one of the earliest
and most influential proponents of the
idea of an ‘unconscious.’
• Freudian unconscious = all the bad
memories and experiences, mostly from
childhood, we have successfully repressed
and forgotten because it is a source of
psychic pain! (1856-1939)
• Repressed memories, however, resurface
as mental or psychic disorders!
7. Sigmund Freud
• Freuds “Discoveries”
1. Linked Childhood to adult behaviors
2. Libido and infantile “sexuality”: infants
reach towards pleasure and away from
pain
3. Repression causes pathologies (e.g.
neurosis)
4. Morality derived from repressive
childhood upbringing
– Freud argued that ‘repression’ was a
necessary evil, the price to be paid for (1856-
progress (‘civilization’). 1939)
8. The ‘Cognitive Unconscious’
• Cognitive Unconscious: (aka Non-
Freudian unconscious) = mental
processes that are inaccessible to
consciousness but that influence
judgments, feelings, or behavior.
• Unlike the Freudian view, which says that
the unconscious exists because of
repression, the contemporary view holds
that the unconscious exists simply
because it is more efficient for the brain
to delegate many mental tasks
(*including many high-level, ‘intelligent’
processes!) to non-conscious
components or ‘modules’
9. The ‘Cognitive Unconscious’
• Cognitive Unconscious: (aka Non-Freudian
unconscious) = mental processes that are
inaccessible to consciousness but that influence
judgments, feelings, or behavior.
Freudian Theory of Unconscious Theory of Cognitive Unconscious
Exists because the conscious mind Exists because:
represses anxiety-provoking thoughts 1. Consciousness has a limited capacity
2. Many unconscious processes evolved
before consciousness.
10. What is the Unconscious?
• Much of what we would like to see is
unseeable! We have no direct access to it.
• What does it do?
1. Learning: pattern detector
2. Attention and Selection: filter and search
engine
3. Interpretation: Translator
4. Feeling and Emotion: Evaluator
5. Goal-setting
11. The Inference Ladder
Unconscious processes (steps 1-3)
1. Observable data: non-conscious mind manages
all of this through perception process
2. Select data: we produce lasting, memorable
patterns. Reality is a flow, full of variation. Our
mind leaves out lots of bits because it doesn’t fit
into our patterns or schemas. Our mind simply
makes stuff up! Plausability.
3. Our mind makes inferences of assumptions on
what the current moment is like, based on what
we remember/know from the past. We are
creating something that isn’t there! It isn’t
real! We aren’t in the present.
12. The Inference Ladder
Conscious processes (steps 4-6)
4. Draw conclusions about what is
happening (external situation), on
the basis of our invented internal
reality.
– This always involves a response to
surges of emotional energy as well
5. Adopt Beliefs about the world.
6. Take action (e.g.
talk, communicate)
13. Inference Ladder
• Beliefs pre-construct data that we perceive in
the first place! “When I see it, I’ll believe
it!” is not usually true: We have to believe it
before we can see it!”
• Lesson?
– People have different selection rules based on
their inheritance and early experience. We can’t
know other people select data, because they
probably don’t know either!
14. PEOPLE WILL KNOW WHAT THEY
THINK ONLY WHEN THEY SEE
WHAT THEY SAY
15. Information Flow in Sensory Systems
and Conscious Perception
Conscious
Total Bandwidth Bandwidth
Sensory System (Bits/second) (Bits per
second)
Cf. The User Illusion by
Norretranders
Eyes 10,000,000 40
Ears 100,000 30
Skin 1,000,000 5
Taste 1,000 1
Smell 100,000 1
16. Is Consciousness in Charge?
Evidence from Cognitive Science
• Studies conducted by the German
neurophysiologist Hans H. Korhuber and his
assistant Luder Deecke, in the mid 1960's
discovered readiness potential: a change in the
electrical potential of the brain, indicated by
EEG readings, that presaged simple actions such
as moving one's hand or foot.
• They asked patients to spontaneously decide to
move their fingers. The results showed that, a
full second before they consciously chose to do
so, their brains indicated they were preparing
for the act. Importantly, the change in the
readiness potential that preceded the
spontaneous act occurred a full second
Wundt's complexity clock. before conscious awareness of the
decision.
17. Is Consciousness in Charge?
Evidence from Cognitive Science
• Subjective relocation in time (aka
backward temporal referral)
– Benjamin Libet’s study in 1979:
stimulated sensory cortex of the brain
that controls sensation in the left
hand, while simultaneously stimulating
the right hand directly on the skin.
– Even when stimulating the skin up to
0.4 seconds after stimulating the
brain, patients always experienced the
stimulation to their skin first.
18. Is Consciousness in Charge?
Evidence from Cognitive Science
We become conscious of the stimulation at least a
half second after the stimulation, (even though
our bodies register the stimulation non-
consciously), but the conscious experience is
projected back in time so that we are not aware of
any time lapse!
In other words, what we experience is never in
real time. There is a half second delay between
what we sense and what we become conscious of
sensing, but we are not aware of this, because we
always attribute our becoming aware to an earlier
point in time, before we actually became aware!
19. Is Consciousness in Charge?
Evidence from Cognitive Science
Implications:
1. “Reality is a hypothesis, or simulation” -
British experimental psychologist Richard Gregory
(in Norretranders, User Illusion).
2. Veto function of consciousness:
“Consciousness cannot initiate action, but it can
decide that it should not be carried out" ( Libet:
243). In other words, consciousness can only
function as a veto. It does not decide itself to
carry out actions! Hence, consciousness is about
doubt, uncertainty, and hesitation, which was
necessary for people to defy the gods…
Editor's Notes
We don’t always know what we don’t know about ourselves!
Freud referred to all of the knowledge you can easily access but aren’t currently thinking about or attending to, as the preconscious. Unlike preconscious data, which you can retrieve at will, a part of your psyche actively prevents you from accessing unconscious data! In Freud’s later ‘structural model’ of the unconscious, Freud also distinguished between different functions of the psyche (ego, id, super-ego). You have probably heard of these terms at some point. Each of these had a conscious and unconscious component, but you will not need to know this for class.
Two points need to be emphasized. First, consciousness has a limited capacity and must filter out relevant data through selective perception. Second, many of the processes which occur beneath conscious awareness (perception, memory, language comprehension, etc.) may have evolved before conscious awareness!
Two points need to be emphasized. First, consciousness has a limited capacity and must filter out relevant data through selective perception. Second, many of the processes which occur beneath conscious awareness (perception, memory, language comprehension, etc.) may have evolved before conscious awareness!
The Cognitive Unconscious is exhibited in phenomena such as: propricioception (awareness of the body); lower-order mental and physical processes outside our awareness; divided attention (e.g. talking on the phone while driving); automaticity of thought (thinking automatically, out of habit); lack of awareness of one’s own feelings; and so on.Source: Strangers to Ourselves (Wilson 2002: 23).
The Inference Ladder: communication model that explains how the mind moves upward from many facts to a few judgments
Beliefs pre-construct data that we perceive in the first place! “When I see it, I’ll believe it!” is not usually true: We have to believe it before we can see it!”
Exercise: How many times the letter f occurs in this sentence:“Finished files are a result of many years of scientific study combined with the experience of many years.”
