LECTURE 2 LEVELS OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

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LECTURE 2LEVELS OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

• David Pearson
• Room T10, William Guild Building
• Email d.g.pearson_at_abdn.ac.uk

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Sigmund Freud (1856 1939)
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• Freud proposed that the human mind consists of
  three levels of awareness.
• Conscious
• All of the thoughts, perceptions, and other
  mental events of which we are currently aware.
• Preconscious
• Mental events outside current awareness, but
  which can be easily recalled under certain
  conditions.

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• Unconscious
• Mental events that cannot be brought into
  conscious awareness under ordinary circumstances.
• Some unconscious events (unacceptable urges and
  desires, traumatic memories etc.) are kept out of
  conscious awareness to prevent anxiety or other
  negative emotions from occurring.

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• Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out
  of date, and they should be. Freud died in 1939,
  and he has been slow to undertake further
  revisions.
• Drew Western, 1998.
• On a broad level, Freuds general premise
  concerning levels of consciousness was correct.
• A great deal of evidence suggests that some
  mental processes can affect behaviour without
  conscious awareness.

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The Placebo Effect

• It has been known for decades that patients
  symptoms may improve solely because they expect
  the given drugs to help them.
• Placebo (inactive) substances are commonly used
  in studies testing the effectiveness of new
  drugs.

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• Kirsch and Sapirstein (1998) carried out a
  meta-analysis of 2,318 depressed patients who had
  been randomly assigned either to an
  antidepressant medication group or to a placebo
  group.
• Their results suggest that up to 75 of effects
  of antidepressants are due solely to patients
  expectations of improvement (note this is a
  controversial finding!!)

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Split-Brain Syndrome

• Some cases of severe epilepsy are treated by
  severing the corpus callosum that connects the
  two hemispheres of the brain.
• The corpus callosum allows information to be
  exchanged between hemispheres.

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• With the exception of smell, each hemisphere
  receives sensory information and controls
  movement on the opposite side of the body.
• Because of lateralization of mental processes
  split-brain surgery can lead to disorders in
  consciousness.

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Subliminal Perception and Priming

• In 1957 market researcher James Vicary reported a
  study involving 45, 699 patrons at a cinema in
  New Jersey.

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Subliminal Perception and Priming

• The two messages shown during the film were Eat
  Popcorn and Drink Coca-Cola.
• A message was flashed for 3/1000th of a second
  every five seconds. Claimed this was too fast for
  conscious awareness.

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• Claimed that over a six-month period sales of
  popcorn rose 57 and sales of Coca-cola rose
  18.1.
• This was the beginning of the concept of
  subliminal advertising.
• However, these impressive results were never
  replicated, and in 1962 Vicary admitted the study
  was a hoax.
• Many claims for subliminal advertising have been
  made, but concept has been largely discredited.

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Cognitive Priming

• Priming refers to the influence a
  non-consciously perceived stimulus can have on
  subsequent mental processing and behaviour.
• Effects of priming on behaviour during
  experiments are small but statistically
  significant.

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• Chartrand and Bargh (2000) conducted an
  experiment in which they subliminally presented
  college students with nouns.
• The type of nouns presented changed relative to
  four experimental conditions.

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• Strongly negative (e.g., cancer, cockroach)
• Mildly negative (e.g., Monday, worm)
• Mildly positive (e.g., parade, clown)
• Strongly positive (e.g., friends, music)
• Later students rated their mood on standard
  psychological inventories.
• Those shown strongly negative words displayed the
  saddest mood. Those shown strongly positive words
  reported the happiest mood.

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The Cognitive Unconscious

• Today cognitive psychologists reject Freuds
  notion of an unconscious mind driven by
  instinctive urges and repressed conflicts.
• Conscious and unconscious mental life are viewed
  as complementary forms of information processing.
• unconscious mental activity is not an
  adversary to the conscious mind. Instead, the
  cognitive unconscious functions as a
  sophisticated support service, working in harmony
  with our conscious thoughts. Daniel Reisberg
  (1997)

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Summary

• Placebo effects, split-brain syndrome, and
  cognitive priming demonstrate that mental
  processes can influence behaviour without
  conscious awareness.
• Therefore, consciousness must reflect only a
  subset of mental processes occurring in the
  brain.
• There are many mental processes for which it is
  not possible for us to become consciously aware.