unconcious - chpater 16

Socrates view

• people do things they dont actually want to do

• Lack of control

Plotinus view

• Theres activity in the brain still going on despite doing things unconsciously

Who used the term unconscious first

Ernst platner, a German philosopher

Descartes view

• believed in dualism

• Theres a strict distinction between the body and the mind

• And all psychological processes are produced by the mind so are concious

Cartesan catastrophe

Based on the idea of dualism that it was logically impossible for unconscious processes to exist

What was sigmund Freud first job

A neurologist with early research finding eel testicles

Psychodynamic theory of personality

• developed by frued

• Relates personality to the interplay of conflicting energy dynamics within the individuals

• Involves both the concious and unconscious forces

Concious mind

• “ego”

• Current awareness, containing everything youre aware of right now

Unconscious mind

• ID and superego

• powerful but inaccessible part of the consciousness, that operates without your knowledge or will try to influence/guide your behavior

Superego

• your idea of right or morals

• Can be concious when we considered our morals

ID

Violent sex obsessed mindset that creates impulses and all the negative urges

Examples of psychoanalysis

• Analyzing the first word that comes to peoples mind when a given word presented (free association)

• Dream analysis

• case studies

• Freudian slips - words that we dont mean to say comes out anyways

What was the main analysis goal of psychoanalysis

There are no errors, all words have hidden meanings through some unconcious thought

Carl jung relation to Freud

• devoted follower of frieuds ideas

• Eventually strayed into believing the unconscious was made of multiple parts

• Personal unconscious and collective unconcious

Personal vs collective unconcious

P - personal experiences and patterns in someones life

C - holds collective memories and myths from the past

Jungian archetypes

• universal symbolic images that appear in myth, art, stories and dreams

• Represent the collective unconcious

• Ex. Hero, wicked witch, the powerful father

3 types of self archetypes

1. Shadow - reflects bestial side of the human nature

2. Anima - feminine archetype in men

3. Animus - masculine archetype in women

Falsifiability and archetype

This is a problem since Theres no way to prove archetypes wrong. Thats why this view of psychology has died out

Hypnosis

• procedure of inducing a heightened state of suggestibility

• It’s not a trance and cant make someone do something against their will

• Suggests changes and the subject is more likely to comply as a result of hypnosis

3 hypnotic suggestion

1. Ideomotor - related to specific actions that can be preformed

2. Challenge - indicate actions that are not to be preformed

3. Cognitive perceptual - involves remembering or forgetting specific information or experiencing altered perceptions such as reduced pain sensation

Systems of hypnosis

hypnosis is based on the interactions of 2 systems

1. Automatic (unconcious) thoughts and behaviors

2. A supervisory system, sometimes referred to as executive processing

Dissociation theory of hypnosis

• unique state in which consciousness is divided into 2 parts

• An observer (perceptual system) and a hidden observer (executive processing)

• When a person is hypnotized the unconcious system is more dominate and the conscious section (executive processing) of their mind is being guided by the hypnotist

Social cognitive theory of hypnosis

The more people believe in hypnosis, the more effective the degree of hypnosis will apply

Cognitive hypnotherapy

• Hypnosis can be used in conjunction with other psychotherapy like CBT

• Most effective for treatment of acute (in the moment) pain by controlling the emotional side of pain

Should it be used as evidence in criminal investigation

• no because memories recovered through hypnosis are often inaccurate and can be influenced by suggestions from the hypnotist

mind wandering

an unintentional redirection of attentions from ones current task to an unrelated train of thought

what does mind wandering effect

negatively effects attention, reading, comprehension and memory

through research, how often do people mind wander

at least 30% for every activity we do, aside from sex

default mode network

• network of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and medial and latera; regions of the parietal lobe

• its active when we are not responding to a stimulus or performing a task

what pretense is mind wandering often associates with

the future

where is the brain activity associated with planning and thinking about the future located

frontopariental network

Levinson’s anesthesia and memory study

• doctors faked an emergency while patients were unconscious under anesthesia

• 40% of patients could recall the exact phrasing

• 80% of patients had some memory of the event

• under anesthesia, people still have some awareness to an extent

other studies involving anesthesia and memory conclusions

• memory was still good when tests occurred within 12 hours following surgery

• effects were still found up to 36 hours post surgery

• indirect tests were more sensitive than direct tests

what occurs in the brain region when people are under anesthesia

• DMN and attention networks are suppressed

• sensory networks are still relatively preserved

mere exposure effect

kunst wilson and Zajonc found that rapidly presentations of images increased participates affective preference for those items

• they didnt consciously perceive the items but they were still unconsciously influenced

subjective threshold

• marcel calculated each participants individual thresholds for consciousness (how fast can someone identify if it was a word or not)

• demonstrated subliminal semantic priming (if we couldnt identify the exact word, our unconcious mind would generate words that was similar)

• ex. BREAD appears too fast, our unconcious mind tells us its SANDWICH

• results showed that our unconscious is relatively smart

how researchers studied conciousness

they needed to have conscious and unconscious perceptions to lead to qualitatively different patterns of data

ex. exclusion task

continuous flash supression

in CFS, dynamic flashing stimulus are presented to one eye through goggles

• this changing stimulus will suppress the perception of a static image presented to the other eye

• however, the fearful faces breakthrough this suppression more quickly than neutral faces

• more “important” info or images will be more readily identifiable to our conscious mind rather than neutral, unimportant stuff

binocular rivalry

• different stimuli presented to each eye can lead to different brain representations

• but the participant can only report one conscious percept

can brain activity predict the future

• patterns of brain activity shows even before the stimulus appear

• as if our unconscious is getting ready to be stimulated to be conscious

• may present subsequent physicals responses and target selection

3 stages of brain processing

1. The instructions

2. The presentation of the word

3. The association

4. Verbalization of reply

3 stages of creativity

1. Consciously attending to the problem - gathering and organization of information

2. Unconscious - unconscious thoughts form

3. Creative product is verbalized then communicated

Distractor task takeaway

Random tasks given to us give us goals/motivation which helps us ignore other irrelevant stimuli distracting ur attention

• goals influence behavior which influences attention

EEG

Recording of the brains electrical activity over period of time using electrodes on scalp

Eureka experience

When creative product/idea enters conscious awarenesss