Nonconscious Processes Research Articles

Is the intention-behaviour gap greater amongst the more deprived? A meta-analysis of five studies on physical activity, diet, and medication adherence in smoking cessation.

ObjectivesUnhealthy behaviour is more common amongst the deprived, thereby contributing to health inequalities. The evidence that the gap between intention and behaviour is greater amongst the more deprived is limited and inconsistent. We tested this hypothesis using objective and self‐report measures of three behaviours, both individual‐ and area‐level indices of socio‐economic status, and pooling data from five studies.DesignSecondary data analysis.MethodsMultiple linear regressions and meta‐analyses of data on physical activity, diet, and medication adherence in smoking cessation from 2,511 participants.ResultsAcross five studies, we found no evidence for an interaction between deprivation and intention in predicting objective or self‐report measures of behaviour. Using objectively measured behaviour and area‐level deprivation, meta‐analyses suggested that the gap between self‐efficacy and behaviour was greater amongst the more deprived (B = .17 [95% CI = 0.02, 0.31]).ConclusionsWe find no compelling evidence to support the hypothesis that the intention–behaviour gap is greater amongst the more deprived. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Unhealthy behaviour is more common in those who are more deprived.This may reflect a larger gap between intentions and behaviour amongst the more deprived.The limited evidence to date testing this hypothesis is mixed. What does this study add? In the most robust study to date, combining results from five trials, we found no evidence for this explanation.The gap between intentions and behaviour did not vary with deprivation for the following: diet, physical activity, or medication adherence in smoking cessation.We did, however, find a larger gap between perceived control over behaviour (self‐efficacy) and behaviour in those more deprived.These findings add to existing evidence to suggest that higher rates of unhealthier behaviour in more deprived groups may be reduced by the following: ◦ Strengthening behavioural control mechanisms (such as executive function and non‐conscious processes) or◦ Behaviour change interventions that bypass behavioural control mechanisms.

New tools and techniques for understanding non-conscious consumer decisions

Market researchers increasingly understand the importance of non-conscious processes in consumer decision making. A number of concepts and models are being adopted from cognitive neuroscience, such as conceptual and motivational priming and processing fluency. In tandem with these new models, researchers are turning to techniques that measure non-conscious processes either through direct brain measures (eg EEG, SST and fMRI), moment-by-moment eye-movement patterns (eye-tracking), facial expressions of emotion (FAC), or the non-conscious emotional and meaning associations that a brand or ad triggers (implicit-response measures). This paper briefly describes the theoretical background to how these ideas are being applied, as well as each main technique, with its potential uses, strengths and weaknesses.

Factor Structure of the Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Representations (AOR) Scale

The Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Representations assessment instrument (AOR; Blatt, Chevron, Quinlan, Schaffer, & Wein, 1992) is one measure of parental representations used in the literature that assesses nonconscious processes while minimizing self-presentation biases. However, only 2 studies have considered the latent factor structure, with mixed findings reported that raise questions about the constructs being assessed. This study used archival data from 4 previous studies containing clinical and nonclinical samples, totaling 722 participants. Individuals were divided into 2 groups in which an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was followed by a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results of both the EFA and CFA suggested that a 3-factor solution was best, with factors that were labeled Agency, Communion, and Punitive based on previous research. The implications of these findings are explored, particularly with regard to the punitive aspect of maternal representations, as well as a possible revision to the scoring rubric.

Conscious Control over Action.

The extensive involvement of nonconscious processes in human behaviour has led some to suggest that consciousness is much less important for the control of action than we might think. In this article I push against this trend, developing an understanding of conscious control that is sensitive to our best models of overt (that is, bodily) action control. Further, I assess the cogency of various zombie challenges—challenges that seek to demote the importance of conscious control for human agency. I argue that though nonconscious contributions to action control are evidently robust, these challenges are overblown.

Conscious versus Nonconscious Mind and Leisure

Why do we do what we do? This article reviews research on nonconscious and conscious processes and reveals the dominant role of the nonconscious mind in human behavior in general and in leisure behavior in particular. Neural preparation for voluntary action starts well before a conscious intention to act. The nonconscious is the default system, and it seeks to avoid any kind of straining activity. Much of human behavior (e.g., TV watching) is driven by stimulus cues in the environment, and people struggle with choosing demanding cognitive and physical leisure activities. Occasionally, though, the conscious mind intervenes and overrides the default system resulting in engagement in activities that increase neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. The task is difficult, however, as the nonconscious mind operates best in the freedom of leisure where the triggering of explanations and excuses for not doing demanding activities is most likely. The struggle is further compounded when people typically use up their finite self-control resources at work, thus leaving little or nothing of these for resisting participation in less demanding and potentially less beneficial leisure. Ironically, freedom in leisure, which is supposed to be a good thing, poses two major problems: (1) the nonconscious effect, when it facilitates the acceptance of excuses for not doing demanding activities, and (2) the conscious effect, when “should-do” leisure activities (e.g., exercise) stir up reactance and conscious resistance to a possible loss of freedom. As a result, freedom in leisure undermines, consciously and nonconsciously, one's initiative for self-development activities when it, in theory, would be expected to promote involvement in various kinds of self- and health-enhancing activities.

Cognitive control and the non-conscious regulation of health behavior

Cognitive control and the non-conscious regulation of health behavior

Dialogical Self in a Complex World: The Need for Bridging Theories.

Dialogical Self in a Complex World: The Need for Bridging Theories.

L’imagerie cérébrale, un outil au service de la psychopathologie ?

Psychopathology is worthy of consideration to inform the application of functional neuroimaging to the study of mental disorders. By promoting an approach based on mental processes underlying disorders rather than an approached based on diagnostic categories, it offers the opportunity to identify biomarkers that could be used as nosological tools. Such biomarkers may eventually inform treatment strategies. However, the question of whether functional brain imaging can be used to learn something about psychopathology, that is understanding the nature and the relationships of mental processes that underlie psychiatric disorders, remains controversial. A potential advantage of functional brain imaging could be the examination of non-conscious mental processes that could be both non reportable by the subject and difficult to capture with behavioral measures. As an example, several studies found depression and anxiety to be associated with amygdala aberrant reactivity to masked emotional stimuli. This might be interpreted as signaling automatic cognitive biases such as those proposed by cognitive theory. But when trying to deduce the presence of a mental process M from a specific pattern of brain activity A, frequently referred to as reverse inference, one has to consider several issues, regardless of the nature of the mental process. These issues can be best formalized with a Bayesian approach where the probability of the presence of M according to A, P(M|A) depends on the a priori probability of M to be present, P(M), as well as on conditional probabilities P(R|M) and P(R|M¯). Obviously, P(M) depends on the specificity of the experimental paradigm used. However, reverse inference usually takes place when A was unexpected (i.e. not supposed to be engaged by the experimental task). Conditional probabilities regarding the probability of A according to the presence or the absence of M, P(A|M) and P(A|M¯) can be estimated using methods of data mining based on growing databases. The less A is specific to M, that is to say the higher P(A|M¯) is, the less valid the reverse inference will be. This is even worse when the definition of R is loose. Despite these limitations, reverse inference is nevertheless a powerful heuristic tool when it comes to generate testable hypotheses about the nature of mental processes and their relationships. Combined with carefully designed experimental paradigms, functional brain imaging is thus likely to bring new knowledge to psychopathology.

Attachment Relationships as Semiotic Scaffolding Systems

This paper describes the semiotic process by which parents, as attachment figures, enable infants to learn to make meaning. It also applies these ideas to psychotherapy, with the therapist functioning as transitional attachment figures to patients where therapy attempts to change semiotic processes that have led to maladaptive behavior. Three types of semiotic processes are described in attachment terminology (Types A, B, and C) and these are offered as possible precursors of a neuro-behavioral nosology tying mental illness to adaptation. Non-conscious biosemiotic processes in infant-parent attachment are the basis for early adaptation as well as adaptation or maladaptation in adulthood. Mother-infant interaction can be described as a series of signs, each interpreted so as to dispose the behavior of the other interactant towards the goal of protecting the infant from danger and distress. Regulating arousal, scaffolding infants’ behavior in the infants’ zone of proximal development (ZPD), and repairing ruptures in the interaction are crucial to infants’ development and adaptation. In semiotic terms, each person activates multiple interpretants (dispositional representations in memory systems) to make meaning of sensory stimulation. Non-verbal semiotic synchrony establishes the relationship whereas shared repair of ruptures promotes change. Attachment strategies, as learned adaptations to threat, are neuro-psychological strategies for making meaning of sensory information so as to dispose protective behavior. Type A privileges cognitive-temporal information, Type C affective information, Type B has no bias. Type A and C limit semiotic freedom by using ‘short-cuts’ in processing that produce quick protective behavior in the short-term. Type B includes more representations, and thus more semiotic freedom, resulting in slower responses and long-term flexibility. Attachment strategies function as meta-interpretants for applying one semiotic process to most incoming information about danger. A, B, and C case examples are analyzed in semiotic terms. Psychotherapy can be considered a helping process embedded in a transitional attachment relationship. For psychotherapy to be successful, both somatic stabilization and a therapeutic relationship are needed. Treatment that uses scaffolded semiotic processes in each patient’s ZPD to repair moment-to-moment ruptures holds the potential to reorganize attachment strategies and transfer that potential to reflective language and relationships outside the therapy. The outcome should be greater semiotic freedom such that the individual can trust their own mental processes and use them to establish safe relationships. Language can speed the process, but premature reliance on verbal transformations of non-conscious information can carry misattributions into a second layer of misconstrued meaning and maladaptive behavior. Even when dangerous family relationships and external danger cannot be changed, patients can come to know their own minds and use information to regulate their behavior. The goal of psychotherapy is to free patients from their past by enabling them to be secure about the functioning of their own minds, so that they can both avoid eliciting harm and also establish supportive relationships.

A consideration of what is meant by automaticity and better ways to measure it.

Existing models of exercise behavior are insufficient in predicting outcomes, this point is shown by the relatively high levels of unexplained variance in exercise behavior in meta-analyses of social cognitive theories and models (Chatzisarantis et al., 2003; Hagger and Chatzisarantis, 2009). Researchers are beginning to recognize the importance of implicit, automatic processes in the prediction of health behaviors (Dimmock and Banting, 2009; Keatley et al., 2012, 2013b). The research by de Bruijn et al. (2014) is useful for highlighting the importance of automaticity in exercise behavior. We commend the authors on investigating an important approach to automaticity and exercise behavior. There were, however, some points with which we disagree. We think that the authors do not provide a clear account of what they mean by automaticity–an issue that is essential for the operationalization of the construct. Bargh (1994), for instance, suggested automaticity has four characteristics: awareness, intention, efficiency, and control; it is not clear whether de Bruijn and colleagues automaticity adheres to this. In particular, we contend that the explicit measure of automaticity used in their research is not an optimal way to assess implicit, impulsive processes. Furthermore, we contend that implicit measures, such as the implicit association test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) would be better positioned as measures of non-conscious processes. The present commentary focuses on pre-behavior automatic associations, which we contend are better assessed by existing implicit measures, rather than during-behavior automatic “processes.”

Feelings: What Are They & How Does the Brain Make Them?

Traditionally, we define “emotions” as feelings and “feelings” as conscious experiences. Conscious experiences are not readily studied in animals. However, animal research is essential to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying psychological function. So how can we make study mechanisms related to emotion in animals? I argue that our approach to this topic has been flawed and propose a way out of the dilemma: to separate processes that control so-called emotional behavior from the processes that give rise to conscious feelings (these are often assumed to be products of the same brain system). I will use research on fear to explain the way that I and many others have studied fear in the laboratory, and then turn to the deep roots of what is typically called fear behavior (but is more appropriately called defensive behavior). I will illustrate how the processes that control defensive behavior do not necessarily result in conscious feelings in people. I conclude that brain mechanisms that detect and respond to threats non-consciously contribute to, but are not the same as, mechanisms that give rise to conscious feelings of fear. This distinction has important implications for fear and anxiety disorders, since symptoms based on non-conscious and conscious processes may be vulnerable to different factors and subject to different forms of treatment.

Interviewing to elicit information: Using priming to promote disclosure.

Research on implicit cognition has found that activating mental concepts can lead people to behave in ways that are consistent with the primed concept. In a pilot study we tested the effects of priming attachment security on the accessibility of disclosure-related concepts. Subsequently, we tested whether activating disclosure concepts by priming attachment security would influence people's forthcomingness. Participants (N = 102) delivered a flash drive to a confederate who exposed them to details of a mock eco terrorism conspiracy, which they were subsequently interviewed about. Before being interviewed, half of the participants were primed; the other half were not. Results showed that primed participants disclosed significantly more information than those who were not primed. Our findings highlight the need for further research on basic nonconscious processes in investigative interviews, as such influences can affect the outcome of the interview. The operation of nonconscious influences in such contexts has implications for practitioners, who may be able to utilize priming to facilitate disclosure.

Monitoring depth of anesthesia: from consciousness to nociception. A window on subcortical brain activity.

Anesthesia results from several inhibitor processes, which interact to lead to loss of consciousness, amnesia, immobility, and analgesia. The anesthetic agents act on the whole brain, the cortical and subcortical areas according to their receptor targets. The conscious processes are rather integrated at the level of the cortical neuronal network, while the nonconscious processes such as the nociception or implicit memory require subcortical processing. A reliable and meaningful monitoring of depth of anesthesia should provide assessment of these different processes. Besides the EEG monitoring which gives mainly information on cortical anesthetic effects, it would be relevant to have also a subcortical feedback allowing an assessment of nociception. Several devices have been proposed in this last decade, to give us an idea of the analgesia/nociception balance. Up to now, most of them are based on the assessment of the autonomic response to noxious stimulation. Among the emerging clinical devices, we can mention those which assess vascular sympathetic response (skin conductance), cardiac and vascular sympathetic response (surgical pleth index), parasympathetic cardiac response (analgesia nociception index), and finally the pupillometry which is based on the assessment of the pupillary reflex dilatation induced by nociceptive stimulations. Basically, the skin conductance might be the most adapted to assess the stress in the awake or sedated neonate, while the performances of this method appear disappointing under anesthesia. The surgical pleth index is still poorly investigated in children. The analgesia nociception index showed promising results in adults, which have to be confirmed, especially in children and in infants, and lastly pupillometry, which can be considered as reliable and reactive in children as in adults, but which is still sometimes complicated in its use.

Sociality, Non-Conscious Processes and the Neurotypical Subject

Sociality, Non-Conscious Processes and the Neurotypical Subject

Hypnos and psyche: How hypnosis has contributed to the study of consciousness.

The field of hypnosis anticipated the current interest in consciousness and has contributed in many ways to its conceptualization and research. This paper is divided into 3 sections. The first describes how hypnosis has enriched the study of alterations of consciousness, considered as dynamic processes subject to important individual differences. This section also considers how hypnosis offers an expanded but cautious view of human potentialities, including the possibility of anomalous cognition. The second section argues that descriptions of alternative selves or sets of mental processes, central to the hypnosis literature, provide insights into contemporary discussions of dissociative and nonconscious processes and the constructive nature of identity. The final section focuses on how hypnosis has emphasized sociocultural interactions, helping illuminate the intersubjective construal of conscious experience. Far from being an outdated set of theories, techniques, and data, hypnosis has much to offer to our understanding of consciousness. (Less)

Sustained invisibility through crowding and continuous flash suppression: a comparative review.

The study of non-conscious vision benefits from several alternative methods that allow the suppression of an image from awareness. Here, we present and compare two of them that are particularly well-suited for creating sustained periods of invisibility, namely visual crowding and continuous flash suppression (CFS). In visual crowding, a peripheral image surrounded by similar flankers becomes impossible to discriminate. In CFS, an image presented to one eye becomes impossible to detect when rapidly changing patterns are presented to the other eye. After discussing the experimental specificities of each method, we give a comparative overview of the main empirical results derived from them, from the mere analysis of low-level features to the extraction of semantic contents. We conclude by proposing practical guidelines and future directions to obtain more quantitative and systematic measures of non-conscious processes under prolonged stimulation.

Coming to terms with fear.

The brain mechanisms of fear have been studied extensively using Pavlovian fear conditioning, a procedure that allows exploration of how the brain learns about and later detects and responds to threats. However, mechanisms that detect and respond to threats are not the same as those that give rise to conscious fear. This is an important distinction because symptoms based on conscious and nonconscious processes may be vulnerable to different predisposing factors and may also be treatable with different approaches in people who suffer from uncontrolled fear or anxiety. A conception of so-called fear conditioning in terms of circuits that operate nonconsciously, but that indirectly contribute to conscious fear, is proposed as way forward.

The intersection of gender and age: an exploration

The understanding of gender inequality for women entering work has not been subject to significant research or theorizing. This small study indicated that young women entering the workplace are subject to direct discrimination and by using an intersectionality approach this paper proposes that the intersection of gender and young age results in women being identified as the out-group, stereotyped and subjected to micropolitics. This paper also argues that the continued unequal power relations in organizations ensures that equality and diversity policies do not change the individual non-conscious processes that take place that allow the continuation of the glass ceiling.

Clinical Neuroscience—Towards a Better Understanding of Non-Conscious versus Conscious Processes Involved in Impulsive Aggressive Behaviours and Pornography Viewership

Assuming that the human mind indeed consists of a non-conscious and a conscious part it makes sense to believe that consciousness at times may struggle to get access to non-conscious content, which seems rather logical. At the same time most of us are aware that affective processing underlying our emotions happens non-consciously due to limbic activity that is mostly sub-cortical. Thus, any explicit response to a question about one’s state of affect is inevitably prone to be inaccurate if not wrong. Therefore, any therapy, biological and/or psychological that is based on explicit responses is potentially misleading. With this opinion article we aim to generate awareness about potential discrepancies between self-reported versus objectively measured emotion-related states. There is more to emotion than just subjective feeling and we should start taking non-conscious emotion-related processes into account.

THE EVOLVING BEHAVIORIST/MENTALIST DISAGREEMENTS

While introspective structural analyses of consciousness faded from psychological discourse, awareness and rationality within psychological interpretation were issues of contention throughout much of the 20th century. Behaviorist positions evolved, with neobehaviorism adhering to Watson’s position and the Skinnerian system (behavior analysis as method; radical behaviorism as philosophy) providing alternatives. Mentalistic psychology evolved as well, with the ”cognitive” label appearing after mid-century along with theoretical constructs modeled upon the digital computer. Debate raged over behaviorists’ experiments on the reinforcement of verbal behavior: Behaviorists found no necessary role of awareness in this; cognitivists vociferously objected. Then in recent decades, with cognitivist’s own experiments yielding data on nonconscious functioning, discussions of implicit (thus, nonconscious) processes — memory, attitudes, etc. — have become typical fare in the literature. Cognitivist interpretations of these phenomena show no recognition of their contradicting a major premise of past cognitivist critiques of behavioral work. Recently, the term, “behavioral” has been rather widely adopted — notably in behavioral economics, where assumptions of psychological rationality have been discredited, but with little recognition that core concepts originated within (or at least were anticipated by) behavior analysis.