the adaptive (cognitive) unconscious

January 9, 2018 | Author: Anonymous | Category: Science, Biology, Neuroscience
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COMN 2111 THE MIND IN COMMUNICATION: THE ADAPTIVE (COGNITIVE) UNCONSCIOUS Lecture 5a

A Review 

In the lectures on Culture we discussed the essential “sharedness” at the heart of talk. 







(1) Common perspectives – ways of seeing – regarding what’s real; what’s good or bad; (2) Shared repertoires of meanings for words and gestures; (3) Shared schema – outlines of attributes for people and behavioral and emotional scripts for situations – so we know what they mean and how to act (or speak) we we are in them Questions: How do we learn all this and call it up instantly when we need it - everyday

Always Learning 

We have always needed to know  



In the womb, our body-mind silently answered these questions as it grew. 

 









What’s going on and, What’s going to happen next. the information was built into the bio-chemical exchanges that went on in the blood flow So, life was good and then we got born! The cord was cut, we were on our own with a collection of face, body and vocal gestures that didn't seem like much on the surface… But …the body mind…the Cognitive Unconscious - was continuing to answer the key questions of life for us It was paying attention to incoming stimuli and how they affect our body…and developing a set of connections between our external efforts and our internal states so we could survive and grow. We’ve already explain the development of nerual networks-schema.

We simply don’t consciously recognize this. Conscious is based on words This is learning that starts before we can talk – and goes on in a part of the mind where there are no words

It’s Not Words: It’s Information Processing 

As individuals, once we acquire language we think conscious thought does everything. But it doesn’t. 





 



As a society, we used to think that thinking made us human - no words, no mental processing - wrong. Changed our mind about the mind – not a word storage place but a computer - an info processor We now know the mind processes 11 million bits of information per second.. The conscious mind process only about 40 bits per second. In his book, Strangers to Ourselves, Tim Wilson asks the obvious question, “so where did the other 10 million 999 thousand 960 bits go?” All that information enters the mind below the level of consciousness into a place without words - the neural netwoks of the unconscious mind

We Have Two Minds Conscious Mind

Cognitive Unconscious Mind

We Have Two Minds 

Adaptive (Cognitive) unconscious 



older, in evolutionary terms, than consciousness

Consciousness more recent acquisition than nonconscious processing  Each have different functions 

The Conscious Mind 

Works best when there is   





Rational thought and problem-solving is work. It’s effortful, slow, controllable and flexible. Neuroscientists say the conscious mind is seated in frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex – the last part of the brain to develop - right behind the forehead.  



Enough time, Not too much data and. The decision matters to us – we have to be motivated to do the work.

That’s the location of the brain's speech, reflective thought, and executive functions. It works in the “there and then” or “what if” mode.

To make time for problem solving work in the repetitious, low demand situations of daily life – the conscious mind shifts a good deal of the “here and now” thinking – some pretty high-level, sophisticated stuff to the other mind - the cognitive unconscious.

The Conscious Mind   





Now the conscious mind can work in the “here and now” 1. If we choose to focus for a while. Like studying for the exam. 2. If it is focused by a dramatic turn of events - in an emergency for instance.  But it works best in this kind of situation when it’s repeatedly trained with routines and protocols for handling emergencies before they actually happen. When an airline suddenly completely loses power during its ascent after takeoff. The pilot has about a minute to successfully land the plane . He instantly has to call up his training - all those hours in the simulator to help him through but his thinking had to be very flexible and extremely quick in this situation - changing by the second. These are not optimal conditions for conscious mind. Too much data, too much going on and to really make effective decisions not enough time. He has to sense the feel of the aircraft and the changing feel of the situation. He had to respond quickly, without much reflection. He calls on the other mind - the second mind - the cognitive unconscious to help him save the day.

The Other Mind At Work 



This was Capt. S. Sullenberger’s description after he successfully crash landed his Airbus 320 in New York’s Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2009, after a double bird strike cut off both engines. His unthinking skill saved all on board

The Adaptive (Cognitive) Unconscious 









It works in completely different ways than the conscious mind. Its automatic, its fast, it works effortlessly and is rigid. It “sees and acts.” No creative reflection here just pattern detection and action. It works in the here and now and, unlike your conscious brain, it’s always paying attention –always on. Every waking second as we grow, the cognitive unconscious is processing incoming data, looking for patterns in the information flows from the rest of our bodies or from the environment around us and remembering them.

How does it remember? It adds emotional markers to them. Called “somatic” markers - changes in the body caused by little nano-surges of positive or negative energy creating what are called non-conscious preferences – it uses these to talk to the conscious mind through the body.

The Adaptive (Cognitive) Unconscious   





The core of it is in the mid-brain, the limbic system of the brain. It stores these deep emotional memories. It’s the “always on” sampling and matching - part of the Adaptive (cognitive) Unconscious Constantly dipping into the stream of incoming info and comparing “thin slices” of these huge inputs to our established non-conscious preferences. We first learned about non-conscious preferences, and how easily they could be developed in the research of Robert Zajonc – early 1980’s. 





He had people watch a list of items go by open a small screen, items that had no meaning for them – nonsense syllables or elements of the Chinese alphabet, a list of 30 of them. He didn't tell the participants that each of them was actually paired with a happy face or a sad face that flashed at the same time but so quickly the conscious mind could not register it. At the end he simply asked people what syllables or ideograms they preferred, they were easily able to do so. They listed the ones with the happy faces. They had created instantaneous nonconscious preferences. With brain scanning we can now see visual system “look” at the subliminal flashes that the conscious mind can’t see

The Adaptive (Cognitive) Unconscious 







Stores our deeply learned neural networks – our schema – for people and behavior - patterns of visual and oral cues that trigger predictions of future action for “what's going to happen next?” It permits us to enact a necessary human attribute – A “Theory of Mind” - automatic mind reading, anticipation of what another is going through or is intending to do. Again each pattern comes with preferential surges of positive or negative emotional energy attached to it. These act as non-verbal messages – somatic signs - to our conscious mind - to take action when needed. This permits us to interact with others smoothly – without hesitation - since we don’t have to consciously think about what we’re going to do next.

Real Life Example 





In 2008, Alex Pentland and his colleagues at MIT published an overview of their research Using a very small device – about the size of a credit card – that is worn like an ID badge – called a sociometer - to continuously measure various nonverbal aspects of people's interactions He calls them honest signals: They happen quickly – in milliseconds – they’re hard to fake and they tell the mind something important about whether an emerging relationship will end momentarily or continue. As an observer, consciously perceiving the subtle variations in behavior that mark immediate states of interest in a relationship would be a difficult task at best, but it’s impossible to do while participating in the conversation yourself.

Real Life Example  









The non-conscious mind does it for you. Pentland’s sociometer data show us what it notices in the person you are talking with: 1. Activity levels – small movements in the body; changes in posture – lean towards or away; changes in tone of voice (not words); talking starts and stops. 2. Mimicry – when people’s movements and speech patterns automatically begin to imitate another’s – beginnings of empathy and trust.  There’s been a lot of research in past decade…on pathways in the brain called mirror neurons.  They are distributed throughout the brain and they trigger off micro imitations of other’s behaviors in our bodies at the muscular level.  It’s how we learn to feel how others feel – the basis of empathy 3. Interest and attention - If two people are talking together and each one is anticipating when the other will pause and jumping in exactly at that point and leaving no gaps, then they're paying a great deal of attention to each other. 4. Influence – shown by the “extent to which one person causes another to match their speech patterns.”

Real Life Example 







This happens every time we meet someone.  Sociometers at a speed dating event:  Each man and woman spent 5 min. chatting with 10 members of the opposite sex. At the end of every encounter, each of them secretly wrote down whether or not they wanted to exchange numbers and handed in a form to an organizer. If they both said yes, organizers passed on numbers at the end of the night. The common assumption is that men will say yes to almost anyone whereas women are far more selective. This turns out to be wrong. Men only said yes to women that they somehow knew were also going to say yes. The sociometer data patterns predicted 71% of the mutual exchanges (far better than the 20% achieved by guessing).  Since the women’s responses were a secret until the end of the night…how could the men know after only 5 minutes?

Real Life Example 









The men picked up on what Pentland calls women’s “exploring displays” at the non-conscious level. When the women had high activity levels (interest and excitement) and openness to influence - shown by a strong variation in vocal emphasis and rhythm as they unconsciously matched their speech flow to the man’s. This pattern accurately predicted the woman’s decision about whether or not to trade phone number. Their conscious decisions may have been kept secret until the end of the evening, but women’s unconscious signaling had already delivered their decisions loud and clear. The Adaptive or cognitive unconscious process data so quickly that we just “seem to feel” the interaction – or not!

Next Lecture 



The Adaptive or Cognitive Unconscious allows us to “feel” what’s going on and anticipate “what’s going to happen next? in interaction Next we’ll review other functions our it serves in our communication.

COMN 2111 THE MIND IN COMMUNICATION: THE ADAPTIVE (COGNITIVE) UNCONSCIOUS Lecture 5b

It Provides Instant People Perception  

As we said earlier the Adaptive or cognitive unconscious is “Always On” making assessments of the people we meet You can see how this works in the flow of a speed dating moment  First time situations – have element of quick, under stress decisions - dealing with new people, - non-conscious mind “thin slices” 

Ambady’s research  



Todorov’s research on “gut reactions” to pictures of candidates 



University teacher clips - 10 sec. then 2 sec. clips Dr. - patient clip - 40 secs.

Look of competence…predict winnings in 70% of US senate races

Keep this in mind in our lectures on the perception processes of the conscious mind in communication.

Helps Us Make Conscious Decisions 





Anthony Damasio writes a breakthrough book – Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994 in which he elegantly assembles historical and contemporary case studies and research on folks whose neo-cortex frontal lobes - had been disconnected from the mid-brain by accident or surgical error. Even though they could speak extremely well and their analytical thought was fully functional their lives fell apart because they couldn’t make the simplest decisions. Patient gave him the insight – Couldn’t make up his mind about anything but also seemed to have no emotional reaction to his terrible situation.

Helps Us Make Conscious Decisions 







Damasio’s breakthrough insight was that the cognitive unconscious uses its emotional preference patterns to nudge the conscious mind through the data and the many small choices that it must make to come to a fully conscious decision. As we said the cognitive unconscious has no words, so it has to communicate through the body itself to get the conscious mind’s attention. “Gut feelings”, “knowings”, headaches, sweaty palms, changes of mood – at every choice point – these somatic markers - we referred to earlier - appear in the body and give the conscious mind a sense of which way it should choose to go. Since the time of Aristotle we have believed that the conscious did all the work of deciding…and now we know that without the support of the Cognitive Unconscious we simply can’t make decisions at all.

Downside: Automatic Thinking 

We are effort-minimizers - use auto thought



Adopt simplest and least effortful strategy



It provides us short cuts - Simple heuristics (learning tools): 

Accessibility: ease with which something comes to mind



Representativeness: How Similar Is A To B



Taking Things At Face Value: If you believe info is valid



As long as our decision satisfies the minimal contextual requirements



Keep this in mind in the upcoming lectures on cognition. 

Particularly when our view of reality is confronted, our unconscious mind compels us to ignore the “reality” of the current situation and think/speak only in judgment about the situation (from the top of the inference ladder)

Can Act Instantly in Difficult Situtions 





The Cognitive Unconscious can move the body without talk - but, if necessary, can find indirect ways of communicating with the conscious mind to get through three kinds of situations.  No threat situation, medium threat situation and high threat situations. Let me just give you a quick example of each of these. No threat – It works with your conscious mind.  Who’s driving the car? High threat perceived - no choice – the Unconscious takes over from your conscious mind - for direct action… 

the oncoming car situation.

Can Act Persistently in Medium Threat Situations 



Medium-level threat situations – The Cognitive Unconscious let’s you know indirectly what’s going on. Iowa gambling game



   





Two decks of cards - red and blue. You turnover cards - get payoffs - make $. Red decks are dangerous - big payoffs at first but then big losses. Blue decks are safer. They generate steady smaller payoffs but also smaller losses.

After 50 cards folks get hunch about red deck problem, but can’t explain why – when asked by the researcher. At 80 cards they can explain it. Explicit or conscious learning has occurred.

Can Act Persistently in Medium Threat Situtions 

Thoughts and decisions bubble up from our unconscious     



Thin slicing - snap judgments- very quick But body sends messages through body Headaches, sweaty palms, back pain, ringing in the ears, “knowings”, “gut feelings” The researchers measured the sweat-on-the-skin - responses to stress. This “galvanic skin response” rises dramatically by the 10th card – the unconscious - knows the danger in the red deck when it sees it. Without speech it can’t tell the conscious mind what to do, so instead it creates hesitations. Without realizing it players did begin to pick gradually fewer red cards from the 10th card on, even though by 50 cards, they still couldn’t explain what was going on.

Unconscious Affects Our Talk 

Positive Effects 





We simply couldn’t talk effectively without its speed, automaticity. Deep learning of:  The language and of the order of words - syntax.  Conversational schemas: what we should do first, next.  Which allows us to talk fluently – to automatically invoke the “normal conversation” schema we discussed in the lecture on culture.

Unconscious Affects Our Talk 



Positive Effects  And without the instantly invoked patterns of people and their talk, that is:  Stereotypical schema of others’ performance, including their nonverbal emotional displays and of situations – where and when are we talking:  We couldn’t display our theory of mind, that is,  Uncover word meanings with little hesitation.  Read the meaning of the others’ nonverbal displays as the words are being spoken.  This high speed processing of conversational flow allows us to know “what going to happen next.” Our cognitive unconscious helps us to do this very quickly and with great certainty.

Unconscious Affects Our Talk 













Negative effects Let me be very clear, the cognitive unconscious isn’t perfect and when it goes wrong, it can go very wrong. It can suddenly turn against us if the external situation changes rapidly from positive to negative. Unlike “first responder” professionals, we are not deeply trained to handle difficult situations before they happen. If someone actively disagrees with us, and it comes as a surprise, or is done in a way that seems to diminish our sense of self - the cognitive unconscious reads it as a threat. We said it was rigid - it can’t tell the difference between a psychological threat to your self-esteem and a physical threat.

And it’s fast – it’s already “on” before your conscious mind knows it.

Unconscious Affects Our Talk 







Negative effects The cognitive unconscious is paying attention to the changing feelings displayed in the face and body behavior of your critic - before the words even appear. It’s already running a “compare and contrast” analysis of emotional expression to anticipate what’s going to happen next. Before our conscious mind can react, it’s running its bodycentered threat response schema – speeding up your heart, increasing sweat on the palms, raising the hairs on the forearm, tightening your neck or throat muscles, forcing the blood out of your gut to your limbs – anything to let you know “IT’S COMING”- get ready to fight or flee.

Unconscious Affects Our Talk 

 



I want you to keep all this in mind when we discussion of emotions in communication. This is the basis for real communication catastrophe – an amygdala hi-jack. We will cover this in detail in emotion lectures. After 30 years of research we know more now about the brain – and the two minds – than we’ve learned in the previous 3000 years. The conscious and unconscious minds operate in close harmony – can’t do without each – but they can suddenly be “out of balance” – and when that happens our communication can go very poorly. Over these next few weeks I hope you will learn something how our two minds operate and what you can do to maintain their delicate balance.

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