Our Backstage Brain
In an April game against the Chicago White Sox, LA Angels pitcher Shohei Ohtani threw a 100 mph pitch past Adam Eaton, who gamely swung but struck out. It took 0.38 seconds for that pitch to reach home plate. Since it takes 0.25 seconds to start a swing, Eaton had 0.13 seconds to decide whether to go after it. Clearly, he couldn’t make a conscious decision carefully in that little time – but his unconscious brain could help. It had seen lots of fastballs in all kinds of situations, so it sent him a signal that he may only have been conscious about as he started swinging.
That’s the unconscious brain at work. Consider a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute. Participants were seated in front of a button and told they could press it with either their right or left hand and had to tell the researcher how long before they pressed it they had decided which hand to use. On average, they reported a time lag of two seconds. By monitoring participants’ brain signals in the protofrontal cortex, researchers could predict with significant accuracy which hand participants would use nine seconds before they acted. In short, the unconscious brain knew seven seconds before the conscious one.
Neuroscientists frequently estimate that 90 percent or more of the brain’s work is done below the level of conscious awareness. Does this mean there’s no free will? No. Your brain is still you, drawing on all you’ve experienced and learned. That can be incredibly efficient and helpful. Imagine if you had to think consciously about every muscle you needed to move to ride a bike. Yet, it can cause problems if you don’t slow down to reflect on impending, important decisions.
Radiologists, we assume, make highly reliable conclusions about the scans they examine. Yet they are far more likely to spot unexpected abnormalities in CT scans when the scans are accompanied by a photo of the patient. In a study of 15 radiologists and 318 patients, doctors noticed important findings in 81 scans accompanied by photographs. But three months later, shown the same scans without the patient photographs, doctors missed 80% of the findings they saw the first time. Confronted with the shocking results, the radiologists realized they unconsciously performed better because they felt more empathy for the patients after seeing their photos (USA Today, December 4, 2008, p. 10D).
Sometimes conscious thought can get in the way of what the unconscious “knows.” In an experiment by psychologist Tim Wilson at the University of Virginia, two groups of participants were asked to evaluate the taste of several jams. In Group A, participants just tasted the jam and rated it. In Group B, participants tasted the jam, filled out a questionnaire about different aspects of it and then rated it. The ratings of those in Group A had a 0.55 correlation with Consumer Reports experts’ ratings of the same jams. The correlation for those in Group B was only 0.11, five times less. The unconscious brain, less burdened with data from the questionnaire, “knew” what the conscious brain did not.
Unconscious processing, as the radiologist study showed, can have very significant impacts. School bond issues are more likely to gain approval in polling places that are inside schools, a psychological effect called unconscious priming. Physicians are more likely to prescribe a certain drug after they’ve received just one free meal from a drug representative, though they’d deny being swayed while writing that scrip. Linguist George Lakoff, in The Political Mind, argues that the unconscious mind is governed by deep metaphors, frames and narratives formed through experience. So at the heart of racism for many is the deep metaphor that white = good and black = bad. When photos showed immigrants scrambling over border fences to seek asylum, it triggered for many the deep metaphor of order = good and disorder = bad, leading to political support for tough, often inhumane policies. Yet, when children were seen crying upon separation from their parents, our unconscious narrative about caring for small children evoked empathy and forced measures to reunite families.
The root problem is not that the unconscious brain is at work but that we lack ways to become aware of it. As Lakoff put it: “What is at stake is the deepest form of freedom, the freedom to control our own minds. To do that, we must make the unconscious conscious.”
On August 5, 1949, the Mann Gulch forest wildfire raged in Montana. Wag Dodge and his fire crew faced being overrun. Drawing on vast experience buried in his subconscious, Dodge quickly did what seemed illogical. He set fire to the nearby brush, yelling to his crew to do the same. He survived as the burnt brush stopped the fire from reaching him. Thirteen men perished because they tried to flee.
Our backstage brain can be helpful or dangerous. We are better off if we understand when to let it “speak” and when to ask why we think what we do.
Photo Credit: curezone.org
