We all like to think that we are in control of our lives, not the big things like government policies of course or earthquakes or tsunamis or even thunderstorms, but the little things like what’s for dinner, what shall I wear, what shall I watch on TV, understanding the family situation, continuously scanning the immediate micro environment, predicting the way things will turn out, interacting with friends and neighbours, having an overall perspective on the things around us. But to what extent are we in control? If someone asks us how we came to make this or that decision, we’ll always have an answer; and if someone asks us to explain this or that piece of our behaviour we’ll never be short of a convincing story, a story listing the reasons for our actions in our perfectly rational and ordered lives. But what if it’s really not like that, what if our free will is mostly an illusion, what if most of our actions are not the perfectly rational responses we think they are, instead being completely automatic responses to information unconsciously absorbed from our environment, information that predisposes us to behave in certain ways, behaviour primed, set and acted out within milliseconds, behaviour which our ancient unconscious behavioural guidance systems believe will best protect us and keep us safe?
Unconscious Behavioural Guidance System
Consciousness is self-awareness which develops in humans aged between eighteen months and two years old. Of all the animals, only humans, chimpanzees and orang-utans possess self-awareness, a faculty which formed very late in our evolutionary development, and one depending critically on the cerebral cortex – the highest level of brain development. Throughout most of our evolutionary history, the species that ultimately evolved into modern humans were not conscious of themselves. But they did survive and prosper in their natural environments - we're the proof. To do this, they needed a mechanism to keep them safe, a capacity that could continuously scan their environment, quickly identify threats and opportunities, formulate goals and plans and then take appropriate action, all within milliseconds. In this pre-self-aware state the link between environmental input and behavioural output was automatic. Consequently, much of the human brain evolved and functioned as an unconscious behavioural guidance system. The same is true today. Consciousness is really an overlay that creates the semblance of rationality in human decision making. The pre-conscious brain is doing what it has always done – continuously and automatically scanning the immediate environment.
Priming
The pre-conscious brain has several components i) an evaluative mechanism, ii) a perceptual mechanism, and iii) a motivational mechanism. Psychological research over the last thirty years shows that each of these mechanisms exists and is automatically and continuously active in the human brain. Moreover each of the components interacts with all of the others. What this means, for example, is that environmental stimuli will be perceived by the brain, unconsciously, and within milliseconds it will be automatically evaluated as good or bad, and a set of goals and behaviours designed to achieve those goals will be automatically initiated – all within milliseconds and all below the threshold of consciousness. Priming is simply the continuous stream of sensory data picked up automatically by the unconscious scanning brain, data which predisposes us to act in certain ways in subsequent moments.
John A. Bargh
As consciousness evolved, it built on the ancient pre-conscious apparatus. This means that humans can experience, evaluate, plan and take action automatically – all below the threshold of consciousness. For example, John Bargh’s experiments show that young students unconsciously primed with the idea of ‘old age’ were observed to walk more slowly away from the experiment than they did on arrival. Moreover their memories were significantly degraded – slowness and memory loss being integral elements of the old age stereotype. A second experiment unconsciously primed students with either ‘rudeness’ or ‘politeness’ and the subsequent set-up kept them waiting to hand in the results of their tests. The students primed with ‘politeness’ waited patiently for up to ten minutes until the end of the experiment. The students primed with ‘rudeness’ interrupted almost immediately.
Derren Brown
Even more striking instances of priming occurred in programs featuring Derren Brown the well-known British magician and psychological entertainer. In one program, Derren invited two senior advertising executives to develop a publicity campaign for a (fictitious) business he was about to set up. He gave them half an hour to come up with a rough sketch, leaving a sealed envelope on the table in the room were the executives were working. At the end of the period, they showed Derren the results of their activity and gave their reasons for the approach they had taken. Derren then opened the envelope which, to everyone’s surprise, showed a sketch virtually identical to the one the executives had come up with themselves. Derren explained that the executives had been unconsciously primed by the sights and sounds they had taken in during a very carefully orchestrated taxi ride to the studio. It was interesting to note that the reasons the executives gave, ever so seriously, for their design decisions had absolutely nothing to do with the real reasons.
In a more sinister application of priming, Derren Brown within the space of a few days unconsciously primed several ordinary people with good jobs in settled careers to become petty thieves robbing the local store, to become participants in a re-run of the infamous Milgram experiment which showed how participants would electrocute to death fellow participants if instructed to do so by white-coated officials, and finally to become armed bank robbers – literally forcing security guards at gun point to give up the 100,000 pounds in cash. That program was really spooky – had the situation been real it would have almost certainly ended in a bloodbath.
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, shows many instances of the unconscious behavioural guidance system at work. Stereotyping is a feature of the system, and sometimes it can go badly wrong as when New York police officers mistakenly shot to death a young black man. Three instantaneous mistakes were made i) they were suspicious and thought the youth was behaving suspiciously, ii) they were terrified and thought the youth was terrifying and iii) the youth was reaching for his wallet to identify himself and they thought he was reaching for a gun. He was shot more than forty two times. The entire incident was over in seven seconds.
Less lethally, in an experiment involving teacher evaluations, the evaluations didn’t change significantly whether the evaluation period was ten seconds or ten months; and in a speed-dating experiment, people’s actual choices bore no relationship at all to the preferences they had stated beforehand. Gladwell’s point is that the unconscious system is much larger than its conscious counterpart, it is permanently active and constantly scanning and it operates in parallel via a spreading activation model. Compared to the conscious brain which must work in series, it really is a super computer. It is often more accurate; but, unfortunately, it can be easily tricked and manipulated which is why magic tricks, advertising, and political spin are so effective.
Pernicious Advertising
Everyone is influenced by advertising but everyone massively underestimates by how much. The reason is simple. Advertising doesn’t much impact our conscious brain; but it significantly influences our unconscious behavioural guidance system. For example, in one of John Bargh’s experiments three groups were exposed to one TV program containing food advertising and one without – the groups were toddlers, teenagers and middle aged adults. The experimenters made available crackers and drinks for the duration of the program but the participants were not instructed to eat or drink. In the case where the participants were primed by the food advertising, the participants consumed 45% more crackers than in the case of no food advertising. The increase in consumption occurred irrespective of whether healthy or junk food was being advertised.
Bargh concludes that the function of the advertising is not brand familiarity which advertisers often claim, rather it is ‘consume more now, and buy more tomorrow’. This is the real function of advertising, the real reason for the multi-billion dollar annual advertising budgets. And whilst we might worry about the fact that some sections of the population are more vulnerable than others – e.g. kids, the truth is we are all equally susceptible via our unconscious guidance systems.
