Who am I?

We spend every waking minute in our own company. Such continued exposure to our own thoughts, feelings and experiences can make us feel like experts on ‘ourselves’. However things are not always so simple. This blog pursues my earlier discussion on the weaknesses of memory into even murkier waters, suggesting that we sometimes simply have no idea about how we really feel.

There is good reason to believe that deep within our brain there is a lot going on that we don't know about. The current thinking in academic psychology is that our brain is split almost into two distinct ‘minds’ – the unconscious and the conscious. A lot of our brain work goes on unconsciously, in the background and unnoticed. Walking is a perfect example, our brain automatically and unconsciously co-ordinates balance, timing and muscle tone to get us from A to B. Having to think about every aspect of movement – gait, speed, balance etc. would be both mentally exhausting and mind numbingly slow. Such automatic and unconscious work takes place in an older (in terms of evolution) part of the brain which we will call the ‘unconscious mind’. The other part of the brain (which I will aptly name the ‘conscious mind’) is where our conscious and deliberate thinking goes on.

This final part of my little neuroscience lesson is the one to remember though. The two minds won’t always necessarily work in sink. Furthermore, due to the architecture of the brain we can’t just have a good think and look into the unconscious mind to find out what is going on. Take walking – I honestly have no real idea about all the intricate goings on that makes me walk as I do. But psychologists have gone one step further (wank pun) and tested the possibility of hidden attitudes lurking in the unconscious mind. The way to do this is through an implicit test of attitude. In such a test participants are required to quickly categorise two types of pictures when paired with either positive or negative words.

For example, if we consider an implicit attitude test of heroes and villains. When the pictures of heroes are presented with positive words we observe that participants are much faster at correctly categorising the image as a hero. On the other hand, when the pictures of villains are presented with negative words participants are faster at categorising. These finding appears because we have an automatic association between villain and 'bad' and one between hero and 'good'. When two associations match up it facilitates speed and accuracy of categorising. This type of test is interesting as participants are not consciously controlling their response times: it’s an automatic and unconscious measure. In the case of heroes and villains conscious (I like heroes) and unconscious (implicit association between heroes and ‘good’) attitudes match up. But they don’t always.

Fazio et al. (1995) investigated a controversial topic: Race. Examining the implicit attitudes of white participants towards white and black people. Their first finding was that the white participants differed in their reaction times by racial profile of photograph: suggestive of a stronger negative association towards blacks over whites. Additionally, participants also filled out a questionnaire asking about attitudes towards racial issues and prejudice, before finally meeting with a black confederate for a brief chat. Unbeknown to participants ratings were made by the black guy on how friendly and interested he thought they were. First of all, participant’s questionnaire responses about racial issues and prejudice did not predict their friendliness and were not related to the implicit attitude test. But you guessed it – the implicit attitude test did predict behaviour. Those with higher unconscious negative attitudes were far less friendly towards the black guy. This study was a landmark as not only did it show that we can possess unknown feelings towards people or things, but it also showed that these unconscious attitudes can drive our behaviour. And to hammer home the point, as the word ‘unconscious’ suggests - we are none the wiser.

But how can we understand this hidden mind? Expert in the study of self knowledge Professor Tim Wilson suggests that if we are to better understand the seemingly hidden parts of our minds we should become very interested in our own behaviour. For example, if you find that you haven’t seen your grandmother in over a year and spend very little on her Christmas presents it may be because you don’t much like her company. You just don’t realise. It may be that over the years you have found her deafness, boring anecdotes and general smell more and more unpleasant. And although society teaches us that we should visit family as it is ‘normal’, it isn’t always the most desirable thing to do. When confronted with the opinion that you don’t much like your grandmother you are adamant it isn’t the case. But you may well be kidding yourself. You may possess a negative implicit attitude and not be fully aware of it yet. But when you think about it more – do you really like sweet old grandma that much?

Thus, looking at our own behaviour and questioning whether the explanations we assign to our actions are fully accurate may help us become more self aware. But don’t worry too much! You can still have some confidence that you like your girlfriend as unconscious and conscious attitudes will often match up. It’s the fact that they sometimes might not which should keep us on our guard.

A final hypothetical example that will pull on the heart strings. Relationships: Fiona could have negative unconscious feelings towards ‘love’ due to a childhood in a broken home in which she regularly witnessed people supposedly ‘in love’ being hurt. Because of this she continues to make mountains out of molehills and convinces herself early on that Adam Grafton is wrong for her when in fact he is very right for her. But Fiona doesn’t know and isn’t the type to think too much about life. Her friends may have witnessed the same pattern with every other bloke and ‘get it’ as they are viewers from the outside. Poor Fiona isn’t though and continues to make the same mistakes over and over again from the inside.

And The Point Is What?

-Try and watch your own behaviour every now and again as you might see something interesting.

-If you know a Fiona then be a good friend and tell her what you think.

-Avoid girls like Fiona, they are a nightmare.

-If you always plan to do something but never quite get round to it be honest with yourself. Is it really that things keep cropping up or is it because you don’t much like them?!