Making decisions when under an Illusion of Control 1

 
PSYCHOLOGY EXTENDED ESSAY

To what extent is the unconscious mind through the illusion of control capable of affecting
cognitive processes such as decision making?

Alejandro Mantilla Redondo

Candidate No. 000185-0064

The English School

Session May 2016

2015-2016

Word Count

3520

 
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Abstract

The illusion of control is something all humans face, but it is often our minds

misinterpreting stimuli and failing to understand its context, correlation does not imply causation

and we don't always keep this in mind, the fact that some behavior is followed by a rewarding

instance does not mean that it is this behavior what led to the reward. The same may be happening

in our cognitive processes, experts claim that our conscious mind is tricked into believing that

decision making is its responsibility when in reality the decisions are on a big portion being made

by the unconscious mind.

This paper aims to investigate how deeply the unconscious mind is embedded in the

cognitive processes which lead to decision making and furthermore how unreliable self-reporting is

when facing stimulus grasped only by the unconscious mind (like subtle messages or seemingly

irrelevant environmental events), these are capable of setting a mood or a position which allows for

the presence of bias in Conscious reasoning which leads to the research question: To what extent is

the unconscious mind through the illusion of control capable of affecting cognitive processes such

as decision making?

In this paper research is used in order to evaluate the research question and deduce to an

accurate degree how embedded the unconscious is in our conscious cognition. The discussion later

aims to link all the factors which influence unconscious cognition and results in the understanding

that our decision making is in fact influenced to the point where the factors we consciously consider

when making a choice are not truly what define what action course is taken, hence, the illusion of

control forces us into realizing cognitive processes which will allow for autonomic behavior.

 
Making decisions when under an Illusion of Control 3
 

Table of Contents

Introduction 4

Theoretical Frame 5

Unconscious mind 5

The “DUMB” unconscious 5

Independence axiom 6

Somatic Marker Hypothesis 6

Self-Reporting Bias 7

Subliminal Priming 8

Abilities and capacity of the Unconscious mind 9

Cognitive Control 9

Pursuing Goals and Managing Goal Conflicts 9

Reasoning 10

Analysis 11

Self-reporting bias and the reliability of research 11

The “Dumb” unconscious against the “Independent” unconscious 11

The Independence Axiom and making decisions consciously 12

Somatic marker hypothesis against conscious reflection 13

Exploitation potential in research 13

Limitations of study 15

 
Making decisions when under an Illusion of Control 4
 

Conclusion 16

References 17

 
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Introduction

Critical events in life often force certain behaviors and decisions on us, without much room

given to think cognitive processes become incomplete in the sense that they don´t account for

relevant influencing factors in the situation, as a result of this rushed decisions often lead to less

beneficial situations. One´s environment has a lot to do with how well one evaluates or appraises a

situation in order for the reaction to return beneficial. These reaction times and accurate appraisal

have been studied a lot over the last half century to the point where efficient models of cognition

have been developed which follow the steps in thought process both under strict conditions and

under less constraining conditions. Behavior with a negative effect on the actor is considered failed

behavior and is often sing of lack of planning or proper appraisal more influenced by stimuli not

perceived by the conscious mind but rather the unconscious one. This paper aims to explore how

the unconscious mind influences decision taking in an unperceivable manner in the actor.

Understanding the unconscious mind will hopefully help actors realize when a decision taken is no

more than a biased response where will and similar traits were absent.

The field in psychology which studies the unconscious mind is Cognitive Psychology, much

of what has been studied and developed in the field branches out to fields outside of psychology

like economics, marketing, education, business science and in most branches of Psychology.

Cognitive Psychology as defined by Richard & Zimbardo (2002) is the study of higher mental

processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, and thinking. The

unconscious mind has caught the attention of many researchers however no definition has been

developed which embraces all of what the unconscious mind stands for because the true definition

is under debate this paper will specify which perspective and definition is being used to explore

decision making.

 
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Theoretical Framework

Unconscious Mind

Bargh and Morsella (2008) propose that in the field of Cognitive Psychology the

Unconscious is directly linked to the subliminal and that the unconscious mind follows an

unintentional nature, meaning it owns an independence of sorts. It is their argument that this view

and understanding of the unconscious mind may be challenged and not so fitting. We will explore

the challenging view first and later define the unconscious that is being challenged through Ran R.

Hassin´s (2013), and Loftus´ and Klinger´s (1992) research pieces along with some complementary

remarks on other articles.

THE “Dumb” UNCONSCIOUS: Through research and experimenting it has been found that

subliminal messages are rather weak and lead to necessarily minimal, unsophisticated mental

processes. Social psychology has switched its focus from the influence of subliminal messages in

the mind to account for the cognitive processes which the mind is unaware of Nisbett & Wilson

(1977) which is why Kitayama´s findings in 1991 are so relevant to defining the abilities of the

unconscious Kitayama found that the unconscious mind is also capable of blocking itself through

alternate cognitive processes, the study suggests that taboo words when provided subliminally are

less likely to be grasped by the unconscious due to a defense mechanism triggered by the anxiety

created by the word, this defense response interferes with the unconscious’ ability to carry out the

cognitive processes which would lead to understanding stimuli. Greenwald, Spangenberg,

Pratkanis, & Eskenazi (1991) carried out a study which gives the previous statement some validity,

subliminal voice messages broadcasted via radio stations should have led the audience to believe

that “TV is a bore” as claimed by the audio. No real evidence was found which supported the

greater strength of unaware perception.

 
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THE INDEPENDENT UNCONSCIOUS: The contemporary social cognition research has

established and defined the unconscious mind as unintentional and independent from conscious

cognitive processes, but still influential on behavior and several cognitive processes (sometimes

even conscious processes). Several independent, unconscious behavioral guidance were found in

research: Perceptual, Motivational, and Evaluative. This perspective gives place to the following

reasoning as stated by Bargh and Morsella (2008) “actions of an unconscious mind precede the

arrival of a conscious mind—that action precedes reflection” (p. 1). This argument considers the

unconscious mind´s ability to control behavior as absolute which means that an individual may

perform as instructed by its unconscious mind and later come to a realization of what the actions

imply. No appraisal of benefit or harm is made until after performing.

Independence Axiom

The independence axiom as defined by Bonatti (2013) is a normative theory which argues

about how our tendency when evaluating the probability of an event to happen is to go against what

solid facts dictate, something with little chance of occurring still has a possibility and therefore we

act as if it were granted, similarly, something with high probability of happening still has a chance

of not doing so meaning we will behave as if it were not happening. This trend in behavior is

explained using the unconscious mind, more so, the second definition of it provided in this paper

which depicts the unconscious as a powerful source of cognitive processes. Desires and

unsuccessful behavior demonstrations are guided by this Independence Axiom.

Somatic Marker Hypothesis

J.M. Martínez-Selva a, J.P. Sánchez-Navarro a, A. Bechara b, F. Román a. (2006) Associate

the Somatic Marker Hypothesis with greater efficacy decision making and learning. Essentially a

 
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somatic marker is a response which has been associated to some event, the way in which one reacts

to a given situation never before experienced works as a reference point for when experiencing

something similar, in scenarios where one must decide under pressure the somatic marker becomes

very useful, previous experiences grant the actor an action course without many cognitive processes

taking place. We link this hypothesis to the unconscious because it is believed that the marker is

kept and handled unconsciously much like what got explained in previous pages. Having a somatic

marker for some situation however does not imply acting with success, misusing markers leads to

unsuccessful behavior but not having any also makes a situation hard to evaluate.

Self-Reporting Bias

There comes a point where our awareness of cognitive processes lacks and results in us not

really knowing why or how we think, compared to how we act the two may at times not seem to

match and results in cognitive dissonance. This scenario is linked to the study of the unconscious

mind in that it is very hard to achieve research where participants will accurately describe what is

happening to them at any given point, subliminal messages are not consciously perceive and

therefore simply asking participants to participate in a study of subliminal perception completely

beats the purpose of the experiment, it is not possible to report on unconscious cognition and any

behavior derived from it. Due to ethical considerations one should also refrain from telling

something which may lead the subject to believe they behave mindlessly as offense may be taken.

Stuart A. Donaldson and Elisa J. Grant-Vallone (2002) explore the factors which affect bias, and

how it is expressed through organizational behavior in an attempt to validate how biases threaten

the validity of research.

 
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Subliminal Priming

Usually heard of in the context of advertising, subliminal priming is an activity where

subliminal perception is used to generate cognitive processes and cognitive activity, most research

on the unconscious mind uses subliminal priming to further understand what cognitive activity is

triggered through, this links back to the somatic marker hypothesis in the sense that the primer is

understood as an event while the somatic marker is the response to this event, the subject is

provided with something familiar which already holds a somatic marker and triggering it will lead

to a decision being made without the consent of the conscious mind. A hidden message perceived

only by the unconscious mind triggers cognitive queues in the receiver. In research these primers

trigger selective processes meaning that the emitter can expect the actions later taken.

 
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Abilities and capacity of the Unconscious mind

Ran R. Hassin (2013) states three functions of the mind once believed to heavily rely on

conscious cognitive processes, and research that has led to find the unconscious´ role in them.

Linking back to what has already been gathered the unconscious mind is subject to many stimuli

which may directly or indirectly trigger or “prime” cognitive processes which the conscious mind

may not have access to, the function that follow may of course happen in both the conscious and the

unconscious simultaneously but when appropriately primed it is possible to distract the conscious

mind from the task.

Cognitive control

Cognitive control refers to a variety of cognitive processes but for the purposes of this paper

cognitive control refers to the Working Memory, inhibition, and task managing. In a study carried

out by Lau and Passingham in 2007 participants were given instructions of a task and would

immediately perform it, in some scenarios the participants were given subliminal instructions of a

certain task some time before developing it and then given true instructions as soon as they would

need to realize the task different groups were subliminally primed through misinformation and

some others with congruent information to the task. This resulted in the participants starting

cognitive control processes specifically when subliminally primed, these processes where task-

setting exclusive.

Goal conflict management

Most perspectives in psychology agree that all actions have a purpose and that purpose

generally leads to benefit, be it altruistic, or selfish, successful behavior is the result of a well

thought out plan, well executed behavior and more than these, having a goal in mind. A the start of

 
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this article the causes for failed behavior were discussed to make the point that making decision

under pressure allow for failed results more often than not, the conscious mind is responsible for

evaluating situations and as discussed earlier the unconscious influences it. Subjects who

participated in a study by Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, and Troetschel (2001) were

subliminally primed with the objective of giving them a set goal in mind unconsciously, a group

which did not get primed behave differently from the primed group in that the primed group

inadvertently were more efficient at the task at hand. This group managed to behave cooperatively

through subliminal priming.

Reasoning

Thinking, problem solving, and decision making all rely on fundamental processes, intuition

for example is the illusion that one is not reasoning yet the decision made feels complete and

successful. Inferences are thoughts which arrive and cross our minds seemingly hidden, however

these can be brought to one´s awareness the same way McKoon & Ratcliff did in1986. We derive

conclusions from stimuli without the need for these to be subliminal, a certain question or phrase

has an explicit situation outlined but linked topics are what our minds process, an example of this

given by Ran R. Hassin is “John jumped from the 25th floor”. This phrase is given to a participant

using a context, the participant is asked to note any mistakes in grammar, but that is not what the

researcher is interested in, in fact while the subject´s conscious was busy going through grammar

rules the unconscious had already understood the meaning behind the sentence, the word “suicide”

may show up in the participant’s mind even though that was not the task at hand.

 
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Analysis

Self-reporting bias and the reliability of research

John A. Bargh and Tanya L. Chartrand (1999) provide an example of when the unconscious

mind may lead a subject to be unaware of their reasoning behind the course of action taken, cases

where the actor fails to retrieve information from its unconscious are most common due to the

nature of this cognition, a professor is unable to clarify to its subjects that they unconsciously

decided to perform in a certain way and that this decision was primed by external factors essentially

removing all responsibility from the both the conscious and unconscious minds in the development

of the decision. Subjects fall in a stance of uncertainty where they do not believe they had no

significant influence in the decision taken but also are unable to provide a satisfying answer to why

they perform. This example is very accurate in depicting the role of the self-reporting bias because

after having experienced an experiment the subjects become negligent and make it hard to give

validity to any information gathered from the experiment. As previously stated the conscious

appraisal of a situation which was subliminally primed takes place only after performing, yet in this

scenario the appraisal which was purposefully set to happen after performing was unable to gather

enough information in order to consciously produce a successful response.

The “Dumb” unconscious against the “Independent” unconscious

It is Bargh´s and Morsella´s (2008) statement that the unconscious mind holds a degree of

independence which unlike what Ran R. Hassin´s (2013) work aims to validate, makes it unreliable,

inefficient and “dumb” because of its individuality the unconscious mind is able to make mistakes

without rebuttal from another party, the conscious mind cannot grasp the cognitive processes from

the unconscious but it may pass on tasks deliberately and it is argued that this ability is what leads

to occasional unsuccessful responses because the unconscious may later decide not to perform said

 
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assigned task without letting the conscious mind learn it. From both pieces of research and what

was gathered above it would be safe to argue about how both definitions of the unconscious have a

role in our cognition and action with previous decision making. Also because of the chronological

order at which the research was published that argues in favor of the smarter and dependable

unconscious is well scattered (some articles being published as late as 2013 while some other as

early as the 1990´s) it would not be wise to claim it as a falsehood because the research that

supports the theory of the unreliable unconscious happens along the same timeline, counter arguing

in an almost synchronized manner. The latter is also reliable research and should not be ruled out,

so far what has been gathered about the unconscious mind hints towards an agreement between the

two theories.

The Independence Axiom and making decisions consciously

As expressed by Bonatti (2013) there is a tendency recognized through the study of

economics and business where one performs against what probability dictates, the paper argues how

this tendency takes place due to strong unconscious cognition but inefficient appraisal, this

phenomena is a very good example of what was previously mentioned, even though the

unconscious has enough cognitive power to generate a response, its individuality allows it to blindly

follow a trend which when appraised consciously and reflexively is clearly counterproductive.

An experiment described by Bonatti in this paper is the Iowa Gambling Task, where

participants were put in a scenario where a deliberate choice has positive or negative consequences,

moreover, some choices led the participants to have uncommon significant losses or wins, and some

led to more common but less meaningful benefits or punishment. The strategy for earning symbolic

rewards was fairly obvious yet a third of the participants failed to follow it, two thirds efficiently

selected the more likely but less meaningful choice playing for the long run, whereas the remaining

third chose the less common but with heavy implications path which often led to instant satisfaction
 
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and no true benefit in the long run, this third followed the independence axiom through compulsive

and poorly thought out responses, a hyper sensibility for rewards or failing to recognize what action

lead to what events are what cause this. The unconscious fails at processing information with

efficacy yet it is capable of realizing an action.

Somatic marker hypothesis against conscious reflection

J.M. Martínez-Selva a, J.P. Sánchez-Navarro a, A. Bechara b, F. Román a. (2006) define

somatic markers as default settings in the unconscious mind which form from previous experiences,

the unconscious mind relies on somatic markers to perform efficiently not wasting resources on

appraising every stimulus. The resource being stored by this mechanism is defined by R.F.

Baumeister, E. Bratslavsky, M. Muraven, and D.M. Tice as the active self or as it is more often

referred to, Self-control. These researchers conducted experiments which consisted of leading

participants to make an educated and thought out choice which would usually go against

compulsive behavior (such as eating a healthy snack instead of the available unhealthy snack.

Performing said decision uses up whatever little self-control the participant has and so actively

evaluating a scenario consciously becomes hard which means the following task will be evaluated

using the unconscious mind, or because the mind is worn out by the straining conditions, somatic

markers will step in, take action, or make decisions. This further validates the assumption that the

unconscious mind consists of the two definitions provided, necessarily the unconscious mind will

take over certain tasks and when the mind is tired it will simply avoid complex thought processes,

which doing so leads to occasional unsuccessful behavior.

Exploitation potential in research

What this paper aims to validate is how influential the unconscious mind may be in our

decision making without us truly choosing this condition, this achieved through differentiating

 
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conscious from unconscious and the different states of mind one may experience (both consciously

and unconsciously) which lead to different degrees of success in behavior, however what this paper

does not consider is the subconscious mind, while gathering the information on the unconscious

mind the terms subconscious mind was sometimes provided in contexts one would not expect from

the unconscious mind or the conscious mind, that is because it is unlike them and performs in

already studied manners, further research on decision making would take step in the right direction

by evaluating the role of the subconscious in acting and making decisions.

 
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Limitations of study

This paper focuses almost exclusively on research done through subliminal priming and

with the point of understanding decision making, the unconscious mind is capable of performing

many other tasks and under very distinct conditions different from subliminal priming which is why

further exploration of the topic is required, narrowing the reliability of research to the topics of this

paper we find that subliminal priming is rather subjective in the sense that the processes aimed at

may only occasionally get primed, it is also impossible at the moment to certainly say that a person

is acting based on conscious or unconscious cognitive processes. Also, what is believed to not be

perceived by the conscious mind may actually be a really obvious features which could prime

conscious thinking defeating the purpose of research, as it is only assumptions can be made in order

to understand which processes take place, when, and for whom. Not every human may react equally

in the unconscious level to stimuli because regardless of how independent it is, it remains a

construct of our experiences, conscious processes, and available active self.

The way in which models are constructed also influence the way we understand the mind,

the somatic marker being an example of this, this theory is far from being certain and lacks even in

slightly explaining different types of markers one may find be it in situations of distress or

exhaustion. The self-serving bias has already been discussed as one of the aspects of research which

most hinders developing theory. The development of the conscious mind is not an aspect which is

often mentioned in research, the way in which one is nurtured will most definitely define the

somatic markers available and will also define the strength with which the unconscious controls our

actions.

 
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Conclusion

The unconscious mind relies heavily in the illusion that the conscious mind controls our

actions and decisions, so much so that the border between conscious and unconscious cognition is

not one we may disable, cognitive process are interchangeable between sides of the border but it

results a lot harder to retrieve cognition from the unconscious side because of its tendency to

simplify methods, the dumb unconscious is the one responsible for letting the conscious mind rest

after emptying the self-control resource pool, while the independent and reliable unconscious uses

this resource minimally at the cost of knowledge and understanding of our behavior. The

unconscious mind is capable of performing independently and guiding behavior such as decision

making to an extent where the conscious mind cannot accurately define or process enough

information to understand how behavior which resulted from unconscious cognition may actually

be understood as successful. As Bargh and Morsella (2008) claim, conscious appraisal occurs only

after the fact, before that the decisions are taken without one´s awareness, and it is the illusion of

control which allows for such events, otherwise the potential for consuming self-control would be

have no tolerance on it limit and consume it beyond help, self-control regulates actions sometime

even before their coming and not having this resource would mean that only somatic markers can

guide our behaviors, but markers are born from spending this resource and following that logic no

somatic markers would ever be formed effectively. We require the illusion of control to act both as

autonomic beings and as thoughtful beings.

 
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References

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