Brentano argued (in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 1874) that intentionality is the mark of the mental: all mental states are intentional in nature, and only mental states are intentional. Put another way, mental states are representational: they are always about something. We do not think, or feel, or desire in the abstract; rather we think, feel, or desire something.
It is important to frame the question in this way because in contemporary psychology the most popular construal of unconscious mental life is in terms of automaticity (Hassin, Uleman, & Bargh, 2005). According to this view, some mental processes occur outside the scope of conscious awareness and control. These processes are inevitably evoked by the appearance of certain stimuli, are incorrigibly executed once set in motion, consume little or no cognitive resources, and do not interfere with conscious mental activities. Automatic processes, as exemplified by the Stroop color-word effect (MacLeod, 1991), are unconscious in the strict sense that they are not available to phenomenal awareness under any circumstances, and can be known only by inference.
Implicit Memory
The study of implicit memory represents a milestone in our understanding of unconscious mental life. We now know that amnesic patients can show priming effects, in which the presentation of a prime affects processing of a target presented later, even though they cannot consciously remember the prime. Priming effects exemplify what Schacter (D. L. Schacter, 1987) has labeled implicit memory � the influence of a past event on subsequent experience, thought, or action, in the absence of conscious recollection of that event.
One very popular view holds that explicit and implicit memory are the product of separate memory systems in the brain. A variant on this view, which goes back at least as far as the work of Ewald Hering (of color vision fame) and Samuel Butler (author of Erewhon) holds that there are not multiple memory systems as such, but rather that there are multiple cognitive systems for perception, conceptual processing, and the like, that have an ability to learn.
Implicit Perception
Just as implicit memory refers to the influence of past events that cannot be consciously remembered, so implicit perception refers to the influence of events in the current stimulus environment that cannot be consciously perceived (Kihlstrom, Barnhardt, & Tataryn, 1992).
Implicit Learning
Apparently, subjects can also learn unconsciously, in the sense that new knowledge acquired through experience can affect their ongoing behavior, even though the subjects are not aware of what they have learned. So, for example, Reber (Reber, 1993) has shown that subjects can pick up on the "grammar" by which meaningless strings of letters have been arranged, permitting them to discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical letter strings, even though they cannot articulate the grammar itself. Similar implicit learning effects have been observed in a number of different paradigms, including categorization, the detection of covariation, sequence learning, and the control of complex systems.
Again, implicit learning effects are sometimes classified as instances of implicit memory, but there is a difference. Implicit memory is an unconscious expression of episodic memory: Subjects do not consciously remember some past event. But implicit learning covers semantic and procedural knowledge. Source amnesia, where subjects are aware of what they know but cannot remember where they have learned it, is a better example of implicit memory. By contrast, subjects in implicit learning remember their learning experiences quite well they just aren’t consciously aware of what they have learned from them. For example, Reber’s subjects remember studying a list of letter strings, but appear unaware of the grammatical rules which they abstracted from that experience. Accordingly, I prefer to reserve that term for unconscious episodic memory, memory for events embedded in a specific spatiotemporal context.
Implicit Thought
An emerging area of research interest is implicit thought � where subjects are influenced by ideas that are not, themselves, properly construed as percepts or memories (Dorfman, Shames, & Kihlstrom, 1996; Kihlstrom, Shames, & Dorfman, 1996). For example, Bowers and his colleagues (Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard, & Parker, 1990) showed that subjects could discriminate between problems that were soluble and those that are not, even though they had not actually arrived at the solutions in question
Implicit Motivation
In implicit motivation, the subject’s experience, thought, and action is affected by a motive (or goal), in the absence of conscious awareness of that motive.
Affective Unconscious
the most interesting study to date, Winkielman and his colleagues found that masked presentation of happy or angry faces affected subjects’ judgments in a consumer-testing situation (Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005). The effect can be explained as follows: perception of the emotional faces induced corresponding emotional states in the subjects, and these emotional states in turn affected their judgments. Because the faces were not consciously perceived, this outcome would count at the very least as an example of implicit perception. But because the subjects did not report any changes in emotional state either, it counts as an example of implicit emotion as well. The subjects’ choice behavior was influenced not just by a percept, but also an affective state, of which they were unaware.
Reflections and Implications
Although the findings cited here give sufficient reason for taking unconscious mental life seriously, it has to be said that the evidence in each of these domains is not equally strong. Implicit perception and implicit memory have now been established to the satisfaction of all but a few critics (and it is possible that no amount of evidence would convince these dissenters anyway). Implicit learning has been explored in the laboratory for more than 40 years, but still the dissociation between explicit and implicit learning has not been established with the rigor that characterizes research in the domains of perception and memory. Implicit thought is on somewhat softer ground, if only because there have been so few relevant studies. This holds true for implicit motives, and implicit emotions, as well.
There is also the matter of the comparative power of unconscious processing. Recently, in both the scientific literature and the popular press, authors have touted the power of unconscious learning and thought � that unconscious learning and automatic processing allow us to solve more complex problems, more efficiently, than is possible consciously (Gladwell, 2005; Wilson, 2002).
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Excerpts from
Unconscious Processes John F. Kihlstrom University of California, Berkeley
To Appear: Reisberg, D., Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology (Oxford Library of Psychology) New York: Oxford University Press.
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References and Footnotes
The Center for Compassion And Altruism Research And
Education:
http://ccare.stanford.edu/
Albert Einstein comprehensive website:
http://alberteinsteinsite.com/
John Bargh, PhD:
http://bargh.socialpsychology.org/
John Bargh http://www.psych.nyu.edu/bargh/index.html
Viktor Frankl:
http://www.viktor-frankl.com/
Dr. Harold Koenig:
https://spiritualityandhealth.duke.edu/index.php/harold-g-koenig-m-d
Dr. Paul Wong:
http://www.drpaulwong.com/
Dr. Paul Wong: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/paul-wong-biography/
Tania Singer references: https://charterforcompassion.org/discovering-empathy/dr-tania-singer-and-the-neuroscience-of-empathy
Dr Amit Sood Mindfulness: https://www.mindfulleader.org/amit-sood
Dr. Koenig on what spirituality can do for you:
https://www.beliefnet.com/wellness/health/2006/05/what-religion-can-do-for-your-health.aspx
Keith Karren – Body, Mind, Spirit: http://pgrpdf.abhappybooks.com/mind-body-health-keith-j-karren-ph-d-pdf-5716009.pdf