Conscious and Unconscious Thought: A Comprehensive Study Guide

Key Concepts & Definitions

Conscious thought: Mental activity of which an individual is aware, involving purposeful deliberation, internal dialogue, and conscious decision-making.
Cognitive unconscious / Unconscious thought: Mental processes that contribute to thoughts, decisions, and perceptions but operate outside of awareness. This includes automatic, implicit, habitual, or inaccessible processes, not just Freudian concepts.
Mental products vs. mental processes:
- Products: The observable outputs of mental activity that we are aware of, such as a belief, a decision, or a perception.
- Processes: The underlying mechanisms, computations, or operations that generate these outputs. Often, we are aware of the products but not the processes themselves.
Introspection & its limits: Our capacity to understand our own cognition is limited. We frequently misattribute causes, reconstruct events after they occur, or remain unaware of many influences on our thoughts and actions.

Evidence & Phenomena

Implicit memory / amnesia: Patients with amnesia may not consciously recall past events but can still perform above chance on tasks that rely on implicit memory. This suggests that memory processes can function unconsciously.
Blindsight: Individuals with damage to the visual cortex report no conscious visual perception in a specific part of their visual field. However, they can accurately guess characteristics of stimuli (e.g., orientation, motion) presented in that blind field, demonstrating perception without conscious awareness.
Priming: Exposure to a stimulus can influence responses to subsequent stimuli without conscious awareness of that influence.
Frame effects, mental set, and other unconscious guides:
- Frame effects: How a problem or decision is framed (e.g., positively or negatively, or in terms of risk) can unconsciously bias conscious decisions.
- Mental sets / assumptions (e.g., “Einstellung”): Unconsciously influence how we approach tasks or problems, sometimes hindering more optimal solutions.

Functions & Advantages / Disadvantages

Advantages of unconscious processes:
- Speed and efficiency: Automaticity frees up valuable cognitive resources.
- Habit guidance: For well-learned tasks, there is less need for conscious control.
- Navigation in complex environments: Unconscious influences help us navigate complex or uncertain situations without requiring conscious attention to every detail.
Disadvantages / limits:
- Inflexibility: Habits, mental sets, and framing biases can lead to errors when a situation demands a change in approach.
- Errors in attribution: We may consciously believe we made a decision, even if it was primarily guided by unconscious cues.
- Introspection can be misleading: We may misremember or misrepresent the actual process by which we arrived at a thought.

The Neural / Cognitive Frameworks

Neuronal workspace hypothesis: A model proposing that consciousness arises in the brain when specific brain areas (referred to as “workspace neurons”) integrate information from domain-specific systems, making it globally accessible. Consciousness is linked to this widespread, integrated activation, whereas unconsciously processed information may remain localized.
Executive control & Attention: Conscious thought is often engaged when control is needed, such as overriding habitual responses or integrating diverse information. The prefrontal cortex and associated executive systems are crucial for these conscious control tasks.
Phenomenal vs Access Consciousness: This framework distinguishes between two facets of consciousness:
- Phenomenal consciousness: Refers to the subjective experience or “what it feels like” (qualia).
- Access consciousness: Refers to the information that is available for reasoning, reporting, and action.

Key Findings & Studies

Studies involving patients with amnesia and blindsight demonstrate that unconscious processing can lead to performance better than chance.
Experiments reveal that people's introspections are often inaccurate. For example, after reading emotionally charged texts, individuals may misattribute the impact of certain sections or misidentify what triggered their reactions.
Decision-making experiments show that framing effects (how information is worded) influence risk-taking, even when individuals believe they are making rational decisions.
Studies comparing automatic and controlled processing highlight that habitual or overlearned behaviors dominate in tasks that do not require conscious override.

Implications & Open Questions

To what extent can conscious thought be bypassed? This question explores when unconscious thought might be superior and for which types of decisions or problems we should rely more on unconscious processes versus conscious deliberation.
Metacognition: Refers to our awareness of our own thoughts and our ability to monitor and control them. A key question is our capacity to discern when our thinking is biased or influenced by unconscious factors.
Subjectivity & qualia: Understanding subjective experience remains a significant challenge, including how to measure it, its origins, and its role.
Consciousness as justification: This concept suggests that conscious awareness provides the normative, moral, and personal justification for our actions or beliefs. This raises questions about the implications when many influencing processes are unconscious.
Neural basis: Further research is needed to map the brain mechanisms supporting access versus phenomenal consciousness and to clarify how unconscious processing transitions into conscious awareness.

Summary (What to Remember)

Most cognition involves both conscious and unconscious components.
We are often aware of the outcomes of our thoughts but not the underlying processes.
Unconscious processes contribute to efficiency, habits, and implicit learning, but can also be misleading.
Conscious thought is slower and more resource-intensive but offers flexibility, control, and the ability to override unhelpful unconscious patterns.
The neuronal workspace hypothesis is a leading model for how conscious awareness might be implemented.
Major debates persist regarding the definition, measurement, and functional role of consciousness.

History of Perspectives in Psychology

Freud (1856-1939)
- Proposed the unconscious: thoughts, memories, and desires outside of awareness that nonetheless influence behavior.
- Evidence included slips of the tongue (“Freudian slips”) and dreams.
- Psychoanalysis: A therapeutic approach aimed at uncovering unconscious conflicts.
- Defense mechanisms: Unconscious strategies used to protect against unpleasant emotions.
Behaviourism (2nd Force, 1913–1950s)
- Focused exclusively on observable behavior.
- Largely ignored the mind and consciousness.
Humanistic Psychology (3rd Force)
- Maslow emphasized the “farther reaches of human nature” and self-actualization.
Transpersonal Psychology (4th Force)
- Maslow (1968): Explored psychology beyond the ego, focusing on transcendence, cosmic identity, and transformation.
- Hartelius et al. (2007): Identified themes such as beyond ego, holistic/wholeness, and transformation.

Consciousness

Definitions of Consciousness
- Awareness of internal & external events (Matlin, 1998; Nairne, 1997).
- Subjective awareness of mental events (Westen, 1999).
- Consciousness always has an object (Benjafield, 1992).
William James (1842-1910)
- Founder of American psychology.
- Advocated for radical empiricism: the scientific study of mental states and experiences.
- Viewed consciousness as a process, not a static “thing.”

Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs)

Tart (1969): Defined ASCs as a qualitative shift in overall mental functioning.
Ludwig (1969): Identified common features of ASCs:
- Distorted time sense.
- Emotional changes.
- Altered body image.
- Perceptual distortions (e.g., synaesthesia).
- A new sense of significance.
Fischer's model: Linked ASCs to different arousal states.

Phenomenology

The study of lived experience (Pekala & Cardeña, 2000).
PCI (Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory, Pekala 1991): A 53-item instrument used to measure the phenomenological effects of various stimuli, such as hypnosis or meditation.

Meditation

Two-fold typology
1. One-pointedness: Focused attention on a single object (e.g., breath, a flower).
2. Vipassana: Open monitoring, involving passive observation of thoughts and sensations.
Reported themes in meditation
1. Transcendence: Moving beyond self/ego, leading to a dissolution of individuality.
2. Different sense of reality: Experiencing boundless awareness and an oceanic field.
3. Positive emotion: Feelings of serenity, deep calm, and peacefulness.

Neurophenomenology

Involves a dialogue between first-person reports (from trained contemplation) and neuroscience.
Cognitive neurophenomenology: Connects to the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience.
Cultural neurophenomenology: Adopts an anthropological and naturalistic approach.

Mind-Body Problem

A fundamental question in philosophy and psychology: How does the mind relate to the body/brain?
Debate centers on whether “consciousness” is a real entity or a reification (mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality).

PSYC206 Topic 10

PSYC206 Topic 10