We are sure that we are aware of everything that is going on in our head. Thoughts, ideas, questions arise, and it seems that this is our whole mind as a whole. Of course, everything is much more complicated.
All psychologists recognize the existence of the unconscious, which takes on a considerable share of the load in the thought process. If we ask ourselves what is the name of the capital of Spain, the answer – Madrid – will come to mind automatically. When we move our fingers, they move along complex trajectories that we do not consciously think about, they are calculated by the unconscious. But in psychology, disputes over the division of duties between the conscious mind and the unconscious unconscious do not subside. One of the scientific articles on this topic puts the question clearly: “Unconscious: smart or stupid?”. The popular view is that it can give simple responses to various stimuli, suggest simple facts, recognize objects, and control familiar movements. As for complex reasoning, which requires planning, logic, and a combination of various ideas, they are accessible only to the conscious mind.
Read more:
- Psychoanalysis: dialogue with the unconscious
However, there is evidence that calls into question such thoughts. During an experiment in Israel, Ran Hassin and his colleagues used a technique called “permanent distraction flicker” to implant information into the subjects’ brains that cannot be consciously perceived. Sounds intimidating, but the technique is actually quite simple. Our brain tries to create a single picture of the world from the images that it “sees” with both eyes. In this experiment, the subjects wore special glasses that showed each eye a separate picture. One eye constantly saw quickly flickering colored squares, which distract the brain so much that a person is not immediately aware of what image his other eye is seeing. It is possible to realize it only after a few seconds (in the case when the “distracting” eye was closed, the image was realized instantly). As such an image, the researchers used a simple arithmetic problem, like “9-3-4 =”. Then they showed the participants in the experiment a number that they had to read aloud as quickly as possible. If it turned out to be the correct answer to the problem, people read it much faster. Conclusion: the unconscious was solving a problem that the consciousness did not even have time to notice! Which proves that the unconscious can do much more than we used to think. In this case, it was not an automatic reaction that was required of him, but an exact solution of a mathematical problem.
Often our mind is compared to an iceberg, only a small part of which is visible on the surface. The authors of the study are confident that the technique of “constant distracting flicker” will help to learn much more about the “underwater” part of our brain.
A. Sklar et al. «Reading and doing arithmetic nonconsciously». Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1211645109