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Lecture 11: Unconscious Motivation

(10-12-22)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

The unconscious: from “Monsters, monsters from the id” [Forbidden Planet, 1956] to wise mind and the wisdom of our body.

William James (1842-1910), Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), Sigmund Freud (1856-1932)

And again, why are we talking about old, dead, white men?

Freud’s unconscious

  • Freud: origin of the talking cure: hysteria (conversion disorders), mental/emotional conflicts, and psychoanalysis
    • Freud studies for four months at the Salpetriere where Charcot was carrying out his investigations of hypnosis and hysteria
    • Freud and Joseph Breuer published Studies in Hysteria using hypnosis to access unconscious material, leading to abreaction (catharsis), and symptom relief
      • And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. King James version of the Christian bible, John 8:32
    • Freud moved away from catharsis and hypnosis to free association and interpretation of defense and transference reactions
    • Freud’s ideas about treatment lead to his views of human personality, human motivation, and human development
  • Freud’s two “structural models” of the mind
    • the Conscious, Preconscious, Unconscious minds
    • Id, Ego, Superego: agencies or processes of mind
  • the development of mind (mental operations): psychoanalysis is a deterministic model–all things have a cause
    • All behavior is adaptive: energy from drive (libido) is used to relieve mental/physical distress (anxiety)
      • Eros: life instinct
      • Thanatos: death instinct (and WWI, the “Great War”, global war vs. WWII, the “second world war”)
    • primary process thinking: fantasy, hallucinatory, not bound by time or reality
      • the original agency of mind, the Id, develops (or is instinctive) to relieve tension by imaginary wish fulfillment
      • there is little awareness of objective reality
      • mind develops and is obliterated repeatedly in the first days/weeks/months of life because fantasy cannot successfully reduce physiological drives
    • secondary process thinking: reality based, causal thinking
      • the secondary agency of mind, the Ego, develops because primary process thinking fails to fulfill needs
      • contingency awareness eventually as the infant develops a sense of the world that can be influenced by its actions
      • impulses that threaten the organism (lead to anxiety) are forced out of awareness
    • autonomous processes develop to increase the efficiency of mental operations
      • internalization of society’s rules and prohibitions lead to the formation of a third agency of mind, the Superego
    • virtually all of the id, most of the superego, and much of the ego operate outside the person’s awareness. The vast majority of all mental process occur unconsciously–without awareness
      • awareness of most unconscious material would cause anxiety, anxiety threatens the stability of the ego, the ego devotes libido (energy) to holding unconscious material outside of awareness
      • pressure from the id to satisfy basic needs (sex, aggression) create stress, these needs threaten to emerge into consciousness to obtain satisfaction, the ego works to hold these impulses outside of awareness but stuff happens (slips of the tongue, dreams, humor, accidents, symptoms)
      • defense mechanisms develop to further control the anxiety threatened by unconscious drives
        • the more primitive defense mechanisms (more distortion of reality) are less adaptive and, if extreme, may come to be viewed as symptoms (Psychological symptoms are seen as adaptive attempts by the ego to maintain emotional stability. Symptoms are inefficient and detrimental to the person’s happiness and overall adjustment but nevertheless serve a purpose.)
        • more mature defense mechanisms (meet needs in ways accepted or valued by society) develop as the individual grows and develops
  • current psychodynamic models (despite relatively dated references, your text’s discussion of contemporary psychodynamic theory is a nice review of present state of psychodynamic thought
    • the important/major role of unconscious processing in our life and problems
    • psychodynamic formulations: individuals usually have multiple simultaneous motivations, which may or may not operate cooperatively
    • emphasis on adaptive behavior: beginning with Anna Freud, the ever increasing focus of psychodynamic models has been on ego functions
    • emphasis on interpersonal relationships: object relationships (interpersonal interactions) and attachment are another focus of modern psychodynamic formulations
    • continuing emphasis on emotional aspects of life and adjustment:
    • increased integration with findings of neuroscience, short term/time limited treatments (i.e., behavioral treatments, cognitive-behavioral therapy, system models), and contemporary developments (mindfulness, cultural perspectives)
    • a (perhaps) healthy scepticism regarding our potential for change; current psychodynamic formulations are probably more balanced regarding basic human nature that Freud’s view (Dr. Reeve is correct in saying that Freud would not have characterized himself as pessimistic rearding human nature, but rather as realistic regarding human nature) but share his view of the limits of change that are realistic for most of us.

Other views of the unconscious

  • Carl Jung
    • other drives
    • individual: your personal unconscious; and collective unconscious: innate, universal, hereditary (genetic)
    • archetypes
      • the Persona: how we present ourselves to the world
      • the Shadow: sex and life instincts, repressed thoughts, desires, instincts, weaknesses
      • the Anima (male) or Animus (female)
      • the Self: the integrated personality
      • other archetypes: the Father, the Mother, the Child/Innocent, the Wise Old Man/Sage, the Hero, the Maiden, the Trickster
  • Milton Erickson
    • hypnosis, trance, accessing the unconscious mind
    • the wisdom of the unconscious
  • Joseph Hilgard’s research on hypnotic phenomena
    • pain and the hidden observer
      • the experience of pain, hypnotic responsiveness, hypnotic analgesia
      • hypnotically induced deafness
    • Hilgard’s neodissociation model (1977): Divided Consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action
      • cognitive control structures
        • executive functions: planning in relation to goals, initiating action, sustaining action
        • monitoring functions: constantly alert, scanning all that takes place
      • the Hidden Observer as a function of the monitoring function
  • Daniel Kahneman, “the two selves”: pain experienced vs. pain remembered
    • “The experiencing self is the one that answers the question: ‘Does it hurt now?'”
    • “The remembering self is the one that answers the question: ‘How was it, on the whole?'”
    • “The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experiences.” (2011, p. 381)
  • other views of the unconscious from the literature on hypnosis
    • the concepts of dissociation, repression, multiple selves
      • from Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder
      • continuing controversies: metaphor or reality?
  • Marsha Lineham, DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), from recurrent parasuicidal behavior in females to borderline personality disorder
    • Emotional Mind, Reasonable Mind, Wise Mind
    • Carl Rogers’ organismic valuing process: an internal (and reliable) sense for what serves the person’s movement toward self-actualization
    • “Luke, trust the Force”
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and other mindfulness based approaches
    • states of mind: Doing Mind and Being Mind

10-19-22

Current views of unconscious in the cognitive sciences

  • “the influences or effects of stimulus processing of which one is not aware” (Bargh & Morsella, 2008, p. 74)
  • There is arguably some consensus regarding how we view “conscious thought”
    • intentional
    • controllable
    • serial in nature (consumptive of limited processing resources)
    • accessible to awareness (i.e., verbally reportable) (Bargh & Morsella, 2008, p. 73)
    • awareness
    • intentionality, efficiency
    • controllability
    • reportability (Barumeister & Bargh)
    • there is no comparable agreement regarding unconscious thought
      • subliminal information processing
      • skill acquisition: typing, driving
    • the issue of consciousness remains a fundamental question for psychology and the other cognitive sciences, as well as philosophy
  • The normative unconscious Weinberger & Stoycheva, 2020): unconscious processes that are not conflictual or motivated like the dynamic uncouscious of Psychoanalytic theory but are universal and independnt of repressed material, defenses, or deprivation experiences.
    • Heuristics (Tversky & Kahneman)
    • Implicit Memory
    • Implicit Learning
    • Implicit Motivation
    • Automaticity
    • Attribution Theory: understanding behavior as dispositionally or environmentally caused (fundamental attribution error; correspondence bias)
    • Affective Primacy: emotions processed faster than thoughts? negative aspects of experience prepotent?
    • Embodied Cognition: impact of metaphors, muscle memory, peripheral nervous system
  • information processing views: the perceptual unconscious
    • biological process that occur without any awareness (or possibility of awareness)
    • subliminal perception
      • Dehaene (2014) argues that it is more efficient for our brain not to be constantly distracted by unchanged sensations and thoughts of little immediate relevance to our current objectives. Unexpected sensory events warrant attention to alert us to potential dangers.
      • “How does our attention decide whether a stimulus is relevant? A key component of the selection process is the assignment of a value to each potential object of thought. In order to survive, animals must have a very quick way of assigning a positive or negative value to every encounter. Should I stay or should I go? Should I approach, or should I retreat? . . . . Valuation is a specialized process that calls upon evolved neural networks within a set of nuclei called the basal ganglia . . . . they too can operate totally outside our conscious awareness. (Dehaene, 2014, p. 77).
      • “our brain hosts a set of clever unconscious devices that constantly monitor the world around us and assign it values to guide our attention and shape our thinking (p. 79)
      • “The alarm system probably arises from operations performed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex–a brain region specializing in unconscious valuation.” (p. 82). Hare, Camerer, & Rangel (2009) presented fMRI data supporting vmPFC valuation affecting decision making.
      • “When made consciously, such decisions put a heavy load on our working memory: the conscious mind, which typically focuses on one or a few possibilities at a time, is easily overwhelmed. . . . . Unconscious processes excel in assigning values to many items and averaging them to reach a decision.” (p. 83).
      • subthreshold stimulus priming
        • subliminally presented visual images can influence cognitive and mood responses
        • “research shos that human become more strongly motivated to engage in everyday behaviors (e.g. solving puzzles, drinking water) when the cognitive representation of that behavior is activated outside of awareness, that is, subliminal priming, and thqt representqtion has been paired with (rewarding) positive cues” (Aarts & Honk, 2009, p. 1300).
        • human participants were subliminally primed with words representing drinking water, then saw visible positive words (“nice”, “pleasant”), and reported more subjective motivation to drink and observed consumption
        • the hypothesis is that unconscious positive priming occurs in two steps: 1) activation of cortical areas for action preparation and semantic processing 2) “the affective tag attached to the action-concept evokes the subcortical motivation system, thereby more strongly motivating the person to engage in the specific behavior.” (p. 1300)
        • Aarts & Honk investigaged subliminal priming compared with the motivational effect of testosterone, which act on motivation, “injection of testosterone in the necleus accumbens motivates animals to engage in actions that are ususally determined by external rewards. The hormone thus seems to enhance motivation without external reward priming.” (p. 1300)
          • studied 24 healthy young women (mean age 20.2 years), who used single-phase oral conceptive and were in “pill-taking period”, none smoked, none took other medication
          • administered 0.5 mg sublingual testosterone or placebo
          • 30 ms presentation of action word (non-sexual, everyday behaviors, e.g. doing a puzzle), 150 ms presentation of random letter string, followed by neutral or positive word for 150 ms (consciously visable)
          • after ten parings, participants rated motivation to engage in the subliminally primed action-concept.
          • Profile of Mood States obtained to assess “any secondary mood-generated effect of testosterone on motivation” (1301)
          • both experimental conditions enhanced reported motivation but, “external positive priming worked here, but did not add motivation after testosterone administration.” (p. 1302)
        • Lee, colleagues, and other investigators have investigated the interactions of priming affects, physical cleaning (face or hands), and cultural background on motivation for moral behavior (Dong & Lee, 2017; Lee, Tang, Wan, Mai, & Liu, 2015; Xu, Begue, & Bushman, 2014).
      • possibly subliminal scents have been reported to influence mood and choices (see your text)
    • implicit association research
      • differences in reaction times are often interpreted as reflecting implicit (unconscious) attitudes
      • levels of limbic (primarily amygdala) activation are often interpreted as reflecting unconscious emotional reactions
      • These effects have been repeated replicated but sample sizes are usually small (especially for the neurological scanning studies), the populations studies have usually been university students (not really representative of the general population), methodological issues continue to come up (again, especially for the neurological studies), and the effects are often statistically significant but relatively weak.
    • social psychology views: the behavioral unconscious (many of the same critiques apply to this literature, plus some issues of replication)
      • Bargh has advanced a view of the unconscious as active and often directing behavior in sophisticated ways. His Selfish Goal theory holds that our behavior is driven by goals than can be held either consciously or unconsciously and when activated direct behavior (Huang & Bargh, 2014).
      • John Bargh and colleagues have carried out multiple studies examining how stimuli outside our awareness can influence behavior (see references on our web page)
        • One of his most frequently cited study reported that subjects rated strangers as more generous and caring if they had just held a warm cup of coffee; in another study people are more likely to give something to others if they had just held something warm and more likely take something for themselves if they held something cold.
        • Washing our hands (or even seeing someone else wash their hands) has been reported to decrease helpful behavior in subjects (Xu, Begue, & Bushman, 2014), in Eastern cultures similar effects have been reported with wiping the face (Lee et al., 2015).
        • Bargh has advanced a view of the unconscious as active and often directing behavior in sophisticated ways. His Selfish Goal theory holds that our behavior is driven by goals than can be held either consciously or unconsciously and when activated direct behavior (Huang & Bargh, 2014).
    • Dual system models
      • automatic and controlled thought (Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 metaphor)
        • Kahneman: two modes of thinking:
          • System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control
          • System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. (2011, pp 20-21).
        • usually adaptive, usually complimentary, sometimes in conflict
        • “Mood evidently affects the operation of System I: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 68) and he goes on to say: “These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. . . . . A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. . . . . A good mood is a signal that things are generally going well, the environment is safe, and it is all right to let down one’s guard down. A bad mood indicates that things are not going very well, there may be a threat, and vigilance is required. Cognitive ease is both a cause and a consequence of a pleasant feeling.” (p. 69).
      • declarative (semantic) and procedual learning
        • automaticity (‘ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details”), auto pilot, and the default mode network
        • incidental learning, memory consolidation during sleep
        • mindfulness and mindlessness
      • deliberate and automatic patterns of action (brushing your teeth, tieing your shoes)
  • What does consciousness do for us?
    • Eagleman (2014) addresses the question: “Why do we have consciousness at all?:
      • “Think about when your conscious awareness comes on line: in those situations where events in the world violate your expectations. When everything is going according to the needs and skills of your zombie systems, your are not consciously aware of most of what’s in front of you; when suddenly they cannot handle the task, you become consciously aware of the problems.” (p. 141)
      • “From an evolutionary point of view, the purpose of consciousness seems to be this: an animal composed of a giant collection of zombie systems would be energy efficient but cognitively inflexible. It would have economical programs for doing particular, simple tasks, but it wouldn’t have rapid ways to switching between programs of setting goals to become expert in novel and unexpected tasks. (p. 142)
      • Graziano (2013) argues similarly that consciousness reflects a global simulation process that directs attention
      • Gazzaniga (2009) sees a very limited role for conscious processes (or the self as an active agent)
        • consciousness comes into play when our experience fails to match our predictions
        • consciousness acts as an, “interpreter” that tries to explain why the person has done whtat they have done (Graziano, 2009), it tries to create a coherent narrative regarding our actions
      • Kurzban (2010) goes further and posits an entirely modular model of mind, even the self is a module. Kurzban and Aktipis (2007) describe the self as a, “social cognitive interface”, “the press secretary” that operates on information that can enhance our social standing or work to influence others, but his module does not make decisions or even have access to what motivated the actions, but like Graziano’s interpreter will try and produce a reasonable story to explain our actions.
      • Dehaene sees consciousness as emerging from a global workspace of neural activation: “By spontaneously generating fluctuating patterns of activity, even in the absence of external stimulation, the global workspace allows us to freely generate new plans, try them out, and change them at will if they fail to fulfill our expectations.” (p. 189).
    • What “consciousness” is and means and the role (if any) it actually plays in our lives remains an intriguing and challenging question.
  • How it stands now, a current view of unconscious motivation (base on Weinberger & Stoycheve, 2020)
    • unconscious processes are real and important: these are the default mode of information processing in our brains
      • “it tends to be broad, expansive, and uncritical”, “Unconscious process come to the fore when the person adopts a passive, noncritical attitude, whereas focus and efforts to figure out what is going on favor consciousness.”, “At the same time, unconscious processes often show stereotypy, rigidity, and resistance to change.” (p. 301)
      • “conscious processes manifest the flexibility that unconscious processes lack. (p. 302)
      • “”there are no pure conscious or unconscious processes and no absolute differentiation between them.” (p. 302)
    • “much unconscious functioning is normative. By this we mean that unconscious are not necessarily set in motion by conflict or pathology nor are they manifestations of conflict and psychopathology. . . . Unconscious processes are a normal, integral part of how we function in the world and with each other.” (o, 302)
    • Unconscious processes do not operate in a rational manner but are not irrational for motivational reasons, they are “organized associative rather than logically and/or hierarchically.” (p. 302)
    • Unconscious processes focus on “what is salient to the person. It learns through experience but in an uncritical, literally empirical fashion. ” (p. 303).
    • Unconscious processing underlies most of our normal functioning. “If we believe in Gazzaniga’s inerpreter or Kurzban and Aktipis’s social cognitive interface, there is virtually no conscious processing at all.” (p. 303).
    • After reviewing three models based on computational neuroscience (massive modularity, parallel distrubuted processing [PDP], neural reuse), they propose their own intergrated formulation: “modified neural reuse model.” (p. 304)
  • Nothing is ever simple
    • criticisms of dual processing models as overly simplistic (Melnikoff & Bargh, 2018)
    • conceptual criticism of dual-processing models of motivation (Billon, 2011)
    • multiple interacting systems within our brain
  • And psychodynamic therapists haven’t forgot about the unconscious
    • “Mommy and I are one”, subliminal psychodynamcic activation (Silverman, L. H., & Weinberger, J. (1985). Mommy and I are one: Implications for psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 40 (12), 1296-1308.), .4 msec exposures to this message were reported to enhance positive mood and adaptive behavior. See critiques and discussions: Balay & Shevrin (1988), Hardaway (1990), Mayer & Merckelbach (1999).
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