Ulterior Motives

How goals, both seen and unseen, drive behavior

Art Markman is a cognitive scientist at the University of Texas whose research spans a range of topics in the way people think. See full bio

November 28, 2008, Behavioral Economics

Comments on "To Know Me Is To Like Me IV: The "Brazil" Theory of Consciousness"

To Know Me Is To Like Me IV: The "Brazil" Theory of Consciousness

By Art Markman, Ph.D. on November 28, 2008 in Ulterior Motives

One reason that I write this blog is that I think most people know very little about their own minds. As a result, we rely on our folk psychology to give us intuitions about how we think. Folk psychology is the general term for the general set of beliefs hanging around in our culture for the way the mind works. Our folk psychology draws from a number of sources including our own observations about or minds, popular myths about the mind (like "we only use 10% of our brain) and aspects of psychological theories past and present that have made it into common discussion (like elements of Freudian psychology that color our beliefs about mind).

In many cases, our folk psychology does a good job of helping us to understand ourselves and other people, even if it has some scientific inaccuracies. One aspect of our folk psychology that seems to be wildly inaccurate, though, is our understanding of the relationship between conscious and unconscious thought.

Most people have what I call the "Brazil" theory of consciousness. Read More

Hmmm

Submitted by Ben2501 on November 28, 2008 - 9:29am.

I feel you are under-stating the effects of the subconscious. You say habitual behaviors can be carried out without conscious awareness, and you state

"we don't do any complex problem solving, reasoning, or decision making without at least some conscious knowledge of what we are doing."

I feel that whether we have "some" conscious knowledge of what we are doing should not be the test for whether the subconscious mind is as big a deal as it is in folk psychology myth. So much is happening inside people's heads that they do not have the time nor the ability to notice, let alone fully understand.

The subconscious may not be performing complex analyses independent of the conscious mind (as in the Brazil theory), but I feel the subconscious and its effect on us should be measured by the extent to which mental processes, subliminal messages, subliminal observations of our environment, etc. (basically everything that escapes our awareness/notice yet influences us) INFORM our conscious thought, not the extent to which it provides the conscious mind with ready-made and completed planning and schemes.

If our conscious planning is practically completely informed by emotions, habitual snap judgments based on stereotypes, peer pressure, evolutionary-psychology-type instinctive responses, etc etc etc, then even if we are completely aware of the conscious planning, if we are unaware of its basis it seems to me that THAT is the subconscious thought that people are talking about in the Brazil Psychology Myth: the unseen BASIS for the conscious plan rather than the unseen completed plan. If my subconscious gave me a completed plan, I think I would be much more skeptical than if it just gave me a ton of feelings, reactions and habits and left it to me to make sense of them and put them all together.

It would be as if Jonathan Pryce, rather than receiving a single tube with a completed plan, instead receives 17 tubes with short, one-sentence observations or beliefs or feelings on them. Jonathan Pryce does not have the time nor inclination to question whether these beliefs are true, so he goes about his day forming plans based on the messages he is receiving. If the plans he forms are based on these tubes, and these thoughts/feelings/observations are formed based on mental processes occurring below the threshold of awareness, then even if the plans involve conscious awareness to be formed, the conscious mind does not have enough oversight in the process as a whole to get the credit for it and for that plan to be labeled as a product of the conscious mind.

Long story short, I guess I agree with you in the falsity of the Brazil theory of the subconscious as you describe it, it's just that I do not feel that the folk psychology myth is exactly as you describe the Brazil Theory and I do not think that folk psychology is dependent on the Brazil Theory to correctly state what a huge influence subconscious mental processes have on us without our knowledge.

This is sort of like zoning

Submitted by D and T on November 12, 2009 - 10:07am.

This is sort of like zoning out when you are driving. Your conscious is thinking about other things on your mind and your subconscious take over which keeps you driving between the lines. Not a great thing though. Or another example: You type so much now that you do not have to think about where each finger is really going instead you just think of the word and the body movements happen automatically. What is controlling that automatic movement? The subconscious.