Profound Impact Of Our Unconscious On Reaching Goals Revealed

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Profound Impact Of Our Unconscious On Reaching Goals Revealed

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Whether you are a habitual list maker, or you prefer to keep your

tasks in your head, everyone pursues their goals in this ever

changing, chaotic environment. We are often aware of our conscious

decisions that bring us closer to reaching our goals, however to what

extent can we count on our unconscious processes to pilot us toward

our destined future?

People can learn rather complex structures of the environment and do

so implicitly, or without intention. Could this unconscious learning

be better if we really wanted it to?

Hebrew University psychologists, Baruch Eitam, Ran Hassin and Yaacov

Schul, examined the benefit of non-conscious goal pursuit (moving

toward a desired goal without being aware of doing so) in new

environments. Existing theory suggests that non-conscious goal

pursuit only reproduces formerly learned actions, therefore

ineffective in mastering a new skill. Eitam and colleagues argue the

opposite: that non-conscious goal pursuit can help people achieve

their goals, even in a new environment, in which they have no prior

experience.

In the first of two experiments, Eitam and colleagues had

participants complete a word search task. One half of the

participants' puzzles included words associated with achievement

(e.g. strive, succeed, first, and win), while the other half

performed a motivationally neutral puzzle including words such as,

carpet, diamond and hat. Then participants performed a computerized

simulation of running a sugar factory.

Their goal in the simulation was to produce a specific amount of

sugar. They were only told that they could change the number of

employees in the factory. Although participants were not told about

the complex relationship that existed between the number of employees

and past production levels (and could not verbalize it after the

experiment had ended); they gradually grew better in controlling the

factory.

As predicted, the non-consciously motivated participants (the group

that had previously found words associated with achievement) learned

to control the factory better than the control group.

In a second experiment the researchers replicated the findings by

having participants perform a simple task of responding to a circle

that repeatedly appeared in one of four locations. They were not told

that the circle (sometimes) appeared in a fixed sequence of

locations. Non-consciously motivated participants had again

(nonconsciously) learned the sequence better than control

participants.

" Taken together, both studies suggest that the powerful,

unintentional, mechanism of implicit learning is related to our non-

conscious wanting and works towards attaining our non-conscious

goals, " the researchers write. These results, which appear in the

March issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association

for Psychological Science, reveal an unconscious process that has

both an advantage over conscious processing and an ability to serve a

person's current goals. Such unconscious processes may be responsible

for far more of human ability than is yet recognized.