|
The New York Times just published an
article in their science section about 'priming effects'.
Psychological priming happens when subconscious stimuli can affect
our conscious choices. They discuss a few experiments, related
neuroscience research and more.
In a recent experiment, psychologists at
Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them
a cup of coffee.
The study participants, college students,
had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately
manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a
laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard,
papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand
with the cup.
That was all it took: The students who
held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later
read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than
did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot
java.
Findings like this one, as improbable as
they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the
last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more
thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in
the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase
in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like
“dependable” and “support” — all
without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
Psychologists say that
“priming” people in this way is not some form of
hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a
demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can
selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.
More fundamentally, the new studies reveal
a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and
independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or
devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can
only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable
of running the program it chooses.
The give and take between these
unconscious choices and our rational, conscious aims can help
explain some of the more mystifying realities of behavior, like how
we can be generous one moment and petty the next, or act rudely at
a dinner party when convinced we are emanating charm.
“When it comes to our behavior from
moment to moment, the big question is, ‘What to do
next?’ ” said John A. Bargh, a professor of psychology
at Yale and a co-author, with Lawrence Williams, of the coffee
study, which was presented at a recent psychology conference.
“Well, we’re finding that we have these unconscious
behavioral guidance systems that are continually furnishing
suggestions through the day about what to do next, and the brain is
considering and often acting on those, all before conscious
awareness.”
Dr. Bargh added: “Sometimes those
goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes, and
sometimes they’re not.”
Priming the Unconscious
The idea of subliminal influence has a
mixed reputation among scientists because of a history of
advertising hype and apparent fraud. In 1957, an ad man named James
Vicary claimed to have increased sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn at
a movie theater in Fort Lee, N.J., by secretly flashing the words
“Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coke” during the
film, too quickly to be consciously noticed. But advertisers and
regulators doubted his story from the beginning, and in a 1962
interview, Mr. Vicary acknowledged that he had trumped up the
findings to gain attention for his business.
Later studies of products promising
subliminal improvement, for things like memory and self-esteem,
found no effect.
Some scientists also caution against
overstating the implications of the latest research on priming
unconscious goals. The new research “doesn’t prove that
consciousness never does anything,” wrote Roy Baumeister, a
professor of psychology at Florida State University, in an e-mail
message. “It’s rather like showing you can hot-wire a
car to start the ignition without keys. That’s important and
potentially useful information, but it doesn’t prove that
keys don’t exist or that keys are useless.”
Yet he and most in the field now agree
that the evidence for psychological hot-wiring has become
overwhelming. In one 2004 experiment, psychologists led by Aaron
Kay, then at Stanford University and now at the University of
Waterloo, had students take part in a one-on-one investment game
with another, unseen player.
Half the students played while sitting at
a large table, at the other end of which was a briefcase and a
black leather portfolio. These students were far stingier with
their money than the others, who played in an identical room, but
with a backpack on the table instead.
The mere presence of the briefcase,
noticed but not consciously registered, generated business-related
associations and expectations, the authors argue, leading the brain
to run the most appropriate goal program: compete. The students had
no sense of whether they had acted selfishly or generously.
In another experiment, published in 2005,
Dutch psychologists had undergraduates sit in a cubicle and fill
out a questionnaire. Hidden in the room was a bucket of water with
a splash of citrus-scented cleaning fluid, giving off a faint odor.
After completing the questionnaire, the young men and women had a
snack, a crumbly biscuit provided by laboratory staff members.
The researchers covertly filmed the snack
time and found that these students cleared away crumbs three times
more often than a comparison group, who had taken the same
questionnaire in a room with no cleaning scent. “That is a
very big effect, and they really had no idea they were doing
it,” said Henk Aarts, a psychologist at Utrecht University
and the senior author of the study.
The Same Brain Circuits
The real-world evidence for these
unconscious effects is clear to anyone who has ever run out to the
car to avoid the rain and ended up driving too fast, or rushed off
to pick up dry cleaning and returned with wine and cigarettes
— but no pressed slacks.
The brain appears to use the very same
neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a
conscious one. In a study that appeared in the journal Science in
May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain
imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for
money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter
they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the
more of the loot they could keep.
As expected, the players squeezed harder
when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of
a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously
perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the
circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area
called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the
participants responded.
“This area is located in what used
to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of
the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Chris
Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London
who wrote the book “Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates
our Mental World.”
The results suggest a
“bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the
ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward
and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious
regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.
Scientists have spent years trying to
pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness,
so far in vain. But there’s little doubt it involves the
prefrontal cortex, the thin outer layer of brain tissue behind the
forehead, and experiments like this one show that it can be one of
the last neural areas to know when a decision is made.
This bottom-up order makes sense from an
evolutionary perspective. The subcortical areas of the brain
evolved first and would have had to help individuals fight, flee
and scavenge well before conscious, distinctly human layers were
added later in evolutionary history. In this sense, Dr. Bargh
argues, unconscious goals can be seen as open-ended, adaptive
agents acting on behalf of the broad, genetically encoded aims
— automatic survival systems.
In several studies, researchers have also
shown that, once covertly activated, an unconscious goal persists
with the same determination that is evident in our conscious
pursuits. Study participants primed to be cooperative are assiduous
in their teamwork, for instance, helping others and sharing
resources in games that last 20 minutes or longer. Ditto for those
set up to be aggressive.
This may help explain how someone can show
up at a party in good spirits and then for some unknown reason
— the host’s loafers? the family portrait on the wall?
some political comment? — turn a little sour, without
realizing the change until later, when a friend remarks on it.
“I was rude? Really? When?”
Mark Schaller, a psychologist at the
University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, has done research
showing that when self-protective instincts are primed —
simply by turning down the lights in a room, for instance —
white people who are normally tolerant become unconsciously more
likely to detect hostility in the faces of black men with neutral
expressions.
“Sometimes nonconscious effects can
be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones,” Dr.
Schaller said, “because we can’t moderate stuff we
don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays
active.”
Until it is satisfied, that is, when the
program is subsequently suppressed, research suggests. In one 2006
study, for instance, researchers had Northwestern University
undergraduates recall an unethical deed from their past, like
betraying a friend, or a virtuous one, like returning lost
property. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, an
antiseptic wipe or a pencil; and those who had recalled bad
behavior were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. They
had been primed to psychologically “cleanse” their
consciences.
Once their hands were wiped, the students
became less likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a
graduate school project. Their hands were clean: the unconscious
goal had been satisfied and now was being suppressed, the findings
suggest.
What You Don’t Know
Using subtle cues for self-improvement is
something like trying to tickle yourself, Dr. Bargh said: priming
doesn’t work if you’re aware of it. Manipulating
others, while possible, is dicey. “We know that as soon as
people feel they’re being manipulated, they do the opposite;
it backfires,” he said.
And researchers do not yet know how or
when, exactly, unconscious drives may suddenly become conscious; or
under which circumstances people are able to override hidden urges
by force of will. Millions have quit smoking, for instance, and
uncounted numbers have resisted darker urges to misbehave that they
don’t even fully understand.
Yet the new research on priming makes it
clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have
company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the
world that don’t always agree with our own, but whose
instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be
helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive.
link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?ex=1186804800&en=6ee6dbaeaaf1816b&ei=5070 |
Neuropsychology 
