UNDER THE MICROSCOPE:Non-conscious influences have more of an effect on our behaviour than we like to think, writes William Reville.
YOU GO TO the box office to buy tickets and you are confronted by a long queue. You decide to jump the queue and go directly to the box office window. Which of these excuses do you think would go down best with the queue: "I'm in an awful rush" or "I need to buy tickets". Surprisingly the second excuse, even though it is nonsensical, works as well as the first. Both excuses have the same basic "form", each causing people to mindlessly perform apparently thoughtful actions (in this case, giving way at the queue). Non-conscious influences have a huge effect on our behaviour and our conscious minds do not exert the powerful control we think they do. The underpinning research is described by Christian Jarrett in The Psychologist, April 2008.
We all take cues from the environment, for example we associate professionalism with suits, but such cues not only provide conscious predictive information, they also unconsciously affect our behaviour. Jarrett describes research in which participants were invited to play a financial game. Those who played at a table on which a briefcase was placed participated far more competitively than those who sat at a table which bore a backpack. When the participants were asked afterwards what factors influenced their play, none mentioned the briefcase or backpack.
Not only do cues from the current environment unconsciously affect our current actions, but current decisions are unconsciously affected by emotional hangovers from the past. Research at Harvard University, described by Jarrett, studied students who were shown film clips designed either to provoke sadness ( The Champ), disgust ( Trainspotting) or neutral feelings (documentaries).
Afterwards the students were asked how much they were prepared to pay for a set of pens. Those who had viewed the disgusting film were willing to pay less, and those who had viewed the sad film were willing to pay more than the "neutral participants".
The participants themselves reported that viewing the films had no effect on their decisions. The researchers interpreted the results to mean that disgust inhibits us from taking in anything new whereas sadness makes us desire change.
These students, of course, knew they had seen film clips, but other research shows that external influences consciously unnoticed can also change behaviour. Images of happy or angry faces were flashed in 16 milli-second bursts at participants - much too quickly for them to notice. Afterwards, although the images had no effect on the self-reported emotions of the participants, those who had been exposed to happy faces were more willing to pay a high price for a beverage offered to them than those exposed to angry faces.
Jarrett also describes research showing that mimicry has very powerful effects so long as the mimicry goes unnoticed consciously by the "mimicee". Business students in pairs were asked to negotiate together with one playing the role of employer and the other a job candidate. Students who were asked to mimic their partner's body language and mannerisms came across as more trustworthy than non-mimicers. However, the mimicry must be subtle. If it is consciously noticed by the other party, it is interpreted as mockery.
We can even be primed to have goals we don't know we have. Jarrett describes research where people were primed with achievement-related words in a scrambled word test. They were then given either an easy or a difficult anagram test. Those primed to achieve but who subsequently failed the anagram test fell into a very bad mood without knowing why.
Jarrett explains why our unconscious minds are so powerful. We relied exclusively on our unconscious minds for much of our evolutionary history as a species - consciousness was a late add-on. Our conscious mind is not always fully switched on and it is important in these periods that "someone is minding the store".
Of course, seeing that our unconscious mechanisms are so strong, we might wonder if we really have freewill at all. But we needn't worry, we can always consciously impose rational analysis of our behaviour. But, overall, as Jarrett points out, we are a combination of impulses, desires drives and rationality.
The power of the unconscious has many practical applications. For example, research shows that a large photograph of a pair of watching eyes strategically placed in a department store significantly reduces shop-lifting. Also, you know the signs in hotel rooms asking you to re-use your towels to help the environment? Well, if the sign also says that the majority of guest do re-use their towels, the fraction of new guests who recycle their towels is significantly increased. In my case they should also post a sign saying that the great majority of guests never take towels home!
William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at UCC - http://understandingscience.ucc.ie