Unconscious Processes Research Articles

Exploring default-interventionist interaction of thinking activity types on probability problem-solving

This research aims to determine the thinking activity types dominated by a mental process in producing answers characterized by automatic, unconscious, and subjective-empirical processes (system 1) in solving problems so that the default-interventionist interaction occurs. This research novelty is the formulation of the contents and thinking activity arrangement adapted to students' thinking when solving problems. The problem used in this research is a mathematical problem that triggers students to produce answers quickly with confidence that the answers are correct at a high level. Another problem is about probability because the mode of occurrence of students' learning difficulties at the secondary school level occurs when learning the concept of probability. This is qualitative research with a case study approach. The research subjects were students of Mathematics Education in semester 1. The results showed that thinking activity one could condition the occurrence of type 1 default-interventionist interaction. Thinking activity two could condition the occurrence of type 2 default-interventionist interaction. Thinking activity three could condition the occurrence of type 3 default-interventionist interaction. This research concluded that the default-interventionist interaction occurred because the content and arrangement of the thinking activity conditioned the subjects to pay attention to information gradually and change the subjects’ beliefs. Lecturers were recommended to produce, develop, and research thinking activities on topics other than probability at various levels of education. The default-interventionist interaction was essential to be conditioned when system one dominated students' thinking, causing difficulties.

The specially designed nudging tableware promotes healthy food choices: Evidence from a randomized crossover trial in normal-weight young adults

PurposeTo evaluate the effects of the specially designed nudging tableware, including a plate and bowl, on individual food choices in normal-weight young adults and preliminarily explore its mechanisms. We hypothesized that the toolset could increase the choice of vegetables and decrease that of rice. MethodsA randomized, single-blind, two-period crossover trial was carried out among 40 normal-weight university students in China. All subjects completed two buffets separated by an interval of one week, wearing the eye tracker. Vegetable choice, evaluated through the proportion of vegetables, was the primary outcome, and the weight of vegetables and rice were the secondary outcomes. The mechanisms of the decision-making process were preliminarily explored through eye tracking. ResultsThe usage of the nudging tableware significantly increased the proportion of vegetables and decreased the amount of rice taken (P<0.05), while insignificantly increased the weight of vegetables (P = 0.079). Eye tracking shows that the nudging plate significantly prolonged the food-choosing process and fixation duration on vegetables (P<0.05), and the latter was positively correlated to the increased quantity of vegetables while using the nudging plate (r = 0.493, P<0.01). ConclusionThe specially designed nudging tableware might be an effective and practical tool to promote the choice of less rice and more vegetables. Mechanisms behind this change might include automatic and unconscious processes with the inconspicuously smaller capacity of the bowl and larger portion size of the vegetable segment, and increased attention triggered by the vegetable patterns and larger green underpainting.

Антиантропологизм в современной западной философии

This research is relevant since it allows us to understand more deeply the specifics of contemporary European discourse about the human being, which is characterized by denaturalization and rejection of wholeness of a human subject, criticism of anthropocentrism and the tendency towards an ontological equation of the human being and material objects. The origins and causes of anti- anthropologism are associated with the crisis of European humanism and attempts to overcome this crisis through a different idea of a human being. Based on the analysis of the philosophical views of M. Heidegger, A. Kojeve, G. Bataille, L. Althusser, M. Foucault and some other thinkers, the author shows the main stages of the development of anti-anthropologism in European philosophy: anti-fundamentalism, anti-humanism, structuralist and theoretical anti-humanism, and ontological anthropology. One of the objectives of this paper is to perform a retrospective analysis of the discourse about the human being in the 20th and 21st centuries. The article considers anti-fundamentalism in the philosophy of M. Heidegger, who dissolves anthropology in ontology. The author demonstrates that in the structural anthropology of C. Lévi-Strauss the problem of unconscious processes paves the way for anti-anthropology. Attention is paid to the influence on philosophical anthropology of the philosophy of M. Foucault, whose interests lie not in the human subject, but in discourse structures. He replaces anthropology with epistemology. The article reveals the essence of the ontological turn in anthropology and discusses the key ideas of ontological anthropology and the concept of multinaturalism. It is emphasized that ontological anthropology not only raises ethical issues, but also aims to reformat our traditional understanding of the world and society. The author stresses the inadequacy of the anti-anthropological trends aimed at discovering a place of harmonious coexistence beyond humanity and postulating the idea of abandoning the traditional understanding of a human being. With the prospects of such a fundamental change, the question inevitably arises of a new axiological model of value orientations, which cannot be resolved without turning to the discourse about the human being.

Individual Cultural Values and Profit Expectations on Investment Intentions in Crypto Currency: Religiosity as a Moderating Variable

This study intends to investigate the effects of conscious and unconscious processes on crypocurrency investment intention. The impact of personal cultural values, profit expectations, and religiosity on intentions for hazardous investments was examined within this paradigm. Additionally, the mediating function of profit expectations in the association between a person's cultural values and religion for crypocurrency investment intents was also examined. Additionally, the topic of religion as a mediator of profit expectations and crypocurrency investing purpose was covered. When our graduate students willingly shared the online survey link on their social networks between February and July 2022, the data were gathered. In all, 446 people responded to the questionnaire in this manner. The AMOS programme was used to carry out structural equation modelling (SEM), which was used to test the research model.In addition to these, the effects of age, education level, sex, and marital status on individual cultural values and investment intentions were examined. The age group of 41 to 50 years old had the highest uncertainty avoidance level. People above the age of 41 had the highest level of long-term orientation. The 51-year-old age group had the least risky investing objectives. Age did not influence collectivism or power distance. The amount of schooling had no impact on any variations in the pertinent variables. Intention to take risks, power distance, masculinity, and collectivism are all greater in men than in women, and married people are more likely to avoid uncertainty and to identify as men than unmarried people. This study is the first to examine the combined effect of conscious and unconscious processes on cryptocurrency investing intentions. The authors have also offered evidence for the presence of a link between these three factors. On the other hand, the number of empirical studies examining the relationship between profit expectancy, religion, and investment intention in cryptocurrency is rather small.

The Image of Transformation and Cognitive Flexibility

The article suggests to view the image of transformation as an idea, that affects cognitive flexibility (the ability to overcome responses or thinking that have become habitual and adapt to new situations). We may notice, that cultural stereotypes of thinking are partly predetermined by mythology. Myths represent our mind’s view of mental capabilities, the way our conscience interprets unconscious processes. The following describes the images of transformations in ancient Greek and Hindu mythologies as two points of view on psychic processes, letting us notice possibilities and limitations of transformation processes offered by Western and Eastern myths. Transformation is considered a basic task in Jungian theory. Today, the entire world mythology has become accessible due to globalization. The purpose of this work is to consider different versions of the transformation image, making it possible to enrich emotionally significant, archetypal symbols that are used in practice, as well as to think about which symbols and mythological images most accurately represent modern consciousness, today’s reality perception. The signs underlying the image of transformation in Eastern myths are compared with modern empirical data on physiology and psyche. Based on this comparison, it is suggested that modern knowledge on cognitive flexibility is closer to Eastern mythology.

The place of Free Will: the freedom of the prisoner.

Debates about the concept of Free Will date back to ancient times. About 40years ago, Benjamin Libet designed an experiment showing that the conscious intention to move is preceded by a specific pattern of brain activation. His finding suggested that unconscious processes determine our decisions. Libet-style experiments have continued to dominate the debate about Free Will, pushing some authors to argue that the existence of Free Will is a mere illusion. We believe that this dispute is because we often measure Free Will using arbitrary human decisions rather than deliberate actions. After reviewing the definition of Free Will and the related literature, we conclude that the scientific evidence does not disprove the existence of Free Will. However, our will encounters several constraints and limitations that should be considered when evaluating our deeds' personal responsibility.

Greek-Coptic Script-Mixing in Egyptian Personal Names and Toponyms of Greek Documents

This paper investigates the inclusion of “Coptic-only” letters in the spelling of Egyptian personal names and toponyms in otherwise Greek documents. A diachronic analysis of eighty documentary texts (4th–8th c. CE), primarily on papyrus, shows an increase of evidence in the sixth century, in line with recent literature on the evolution of documentary Coptic. As opposed to earlier papyri, which were mainly everyday texts with highly problematic Greek and interference from Egyptian, many later documents were of higher legal value, penned by bilingual scribes who were proficient in Greek, who could incorporate Coptic characters into their Greek writing, proving that script-mixing could be unrelated to poor linguistic competence. The phenomenon seems to have arisen from an unconscious cognitive process of ad hoc phoneme-to-grapheme conversion, which offered different spelling variants, and was triggered by the Egyptian origin of names, the special phonemes that certain Coptic graphemes represented, and the lack of inflection amidst the Greek text.

Intuition as value creation cognitive engine on the entrepreneurial innovation: an integrative review

The literature points to studies on the relevance of intuition as a cognitive process that promotes creativity, producing innovations in decision-making. Field studies are considered important in organizations where processes are oriented by goals and performance and require new ways of solving problems, accelerating the process through new heuristics, improving decision-making results, and creating new ways of planning products. Intuition is an incremental or disruptive cognitive process that builds new ways of seeing problem-solving, which results in the adoption of ideas that are elaborated and filtered for their operability in situations of greater complexity. This work aims to point out the impacts of this cognitive process of the intuitive individual, due to its plasticity, in its induction in the team-oriented towards value creation. Scientific research points out that intuitive processes' emphasis, appreciation, and stimulation promote creativity, which constitutes the basis and input for innovative products. Notably, in new product development (NPD), the adoption of intuition has been emphasized as a facilitator of team creativity, thus generating innovation, an essential factor in entrepreneurial behavior. In this context, studies show that mindfulness is a method adopted to access our unconscious processing and intuition. Another aspect researched in this review is the biological basis of intuitive and creative analysis. In this way, the authors of this article seek to understand how intuition and creativity can act in the creation of value in entrepreneurial innovation and the neurobiological bases of the theme in question.

Subjective and objective measures of visual awareness converge.

Within consciousness research, the most appropriate assessment of visual awareness is matter of a controversial debate: Subjective measures rely on introspections of the observer related to perceptual experiences, whereas objective measures are based on performance of the observer to accurately detect or discriminate the stimulus in question across a series of trials. In the present study, we compared subjective and objective awareness measurements across different stimulus feature and contrast levels using a temporal two-alternative forced choice task. This task has the advantage to provide an objective psychophysical performance measurement, while minimizing biases from unconscious processing. Thresholds based on subjective ratings with the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) and on performance accuracy were determined for detection (stimulus presence) and discrimination (letter case) tasks at high and low stimulus contrast. We found a comparable pattern of thresholds across tasks and contrasts for objective and subjective measurements of awareness. These findings suggest that objective performance measures based on accuracy and subjective ratings of the visual experience can provide similar information on the feature-content of a percept. The observed similarity of thresholds validates psychophysical and subjective approaches to awareness as providing converging and thus most likely veridical measures of awareness.

The Educator’s Vulnerability: Systemic Oppression From an Indian Frame of Reference

The author explores the impact of the Indian Cultural Parent on education in India, particularly the possible impact on transactional analysis (TA) training through the experience of both trainers and trainees. The article touches on the author’s personal exploration and considers relevant philosophical ideas and political systems and systemic processes. She aims to understand the educator’s role through the experience in the Indian cultural context of having a rich heritage with ancestral influences that contribute to academic rigidity and a dogmatic approach. She asks from a systemic perspective what influences academic rigidity in the Indian TA community and what unconscious process has been part of the Indian psyche for the TA educator. Instances are given of issues that inhibit the educator’s flexibility unconsciously and the learner’s culture shock experiences that can result in chaos and confusion. The article concludes with a perspective on the learning space using Cupsa’s stages of change, which learners and educators can contribute to in the process of becoming.

On the Role of Speech In Psychoanalysis: Revisiting Lacan's "Function and Field".

A number of underutilized concepts in Lacan's "Function and Field of Language and Speech in Psychoanalysis" are examined with an eye to rendering them accessible and practicable to analysts from outside the Lacanian tradition. The concepts of empty and full speech are discussed, along with the notions of the subject of the unconscious, and speaking as itself a mode of intersubjectivity. Attention is afforded the future-oriented mode of psychic temporality that Lacan argues pertains to psychoanalytic practice (that of the future anterior tense, the standpoint from which analysands situate themselves in respect of what they "will have been"). These concepts are then linked to technical initiatives-such as punctuation (the "editorial" role the analyst plays in reference to the analysand's speech) and scansion (the use of suspension, interruption, or cutting to highlight facets of that speech). These techniques can be read as extensions of Freud's fundamental rule of free association insofar as they aim to disrupt defensive ego narratives, engage unconscious processes, and draw analysands' attention, in a potentially transformative manner, to their speech and what it does.

Assessing the influence of emotional expressions on perceptual sensitivity to faces overcoming interocular suppression.

Detecting faces and identifying their emotional expressions are essential for social interaction. The importance of expressions has prompted suggestions that some emotionally relevant facial features may be processed unconsciously, and it has been further suggested that this unconscious processing yields preferential access to awareness. Evidence for such preferential access has predominantly come from reaction times in the breaking continuous flash suppression (bCFS) paradigm, which measures how long it takes different stimuli to overcome interocular suppression. For instance, it has been claimed that fearful expressions break through suppression faster than neutral expressions. However, in the bCFS procedure, observers can decide how much information they receive before committing to a report, so although their responses may reflect differential detection sensitivity, they may also be influenced by differences in decision criteria, stimulus identification, and response production processes. Here, we employ a procedure that directly measures sensitivity for both face detection and identification of facial expressions, using predefined exposure durations. We apply diverse psychophysical approaches-forced-choice localization, presence/absence detection, and staircase-based threshold measurement; across six experiments, we find that emotional expressions do not alter detection sensitivity to faces as they break through CFS. Our findings constrain the possible mechanisms underlying previous findings: faster reporting of emotional expressions' breakthrough into awareness is unlikely to be due to the presence of emotion affecting perceptual sensitivity; the source of such effects is likely to reside in one of the many other processes that influence response times. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Seeing in the Dark: A View into Dissociation and Healing.

In this paper, I will explore the role of art-making, the experience of trauma and dissociation, and the process of working with self-states from an analytic and creative frame. Relevant literature on dissociation, trauma, and the use of art will be discussed. A case involving my work with an adolescent girl who had experienced sexual abuse from a family member will be shared, with an emphasis on the meaningful role images played during the therapeutic process. Both Jungian and psychoanalytic models of conceptualizing and working with dissociation are included, following Donald Kalsched's (2013) recommendation for a "binocular stance" to treatment, including both a focus on the inner, intrapsychic world and the interpersonal, relational realm, and how art images both illuminated and expressed these realms. Within the therapeutic process, art images allowed the therapist a view into the client's unconscious process, and created a meeting ground for dissociative barriers to be gradually seen, felt and known, by both therapist and client. The experience of dissociation, in images and in session, provided a reference point for myself and my client, Taylor, to develop a shared understanding and a framework for growth.

Cognitive Psychology in Artificial Intelligence —Three Levels of Conscious Processing

In this paper, from the perspective of the intersection of cognitive psychology and the field of artificial intelligence, we present the three levels of conscious processing proposed by Dehaene et al. They are unconscious processing (C0), consciousness in the first sense (C1)-global availability, consciousness in the second sense (C2)-self-monitoring. The paper also cites an empirical evidence for the intersection of the two fields and summarizes some researchers’ questions about whether the two can intersect.

Event-related potential correlates of implicit processing of own- and other-race faces in children

Human adults typically experience difficulties in recognizing and discriminating individual faces belonging to racial groups other than their own. The origin of this “other-race” effect is set in infancy, but the understanding of its developmental course is fragmented. We aimed to access the mechanisms of the other-race effect in childhood by unraveling the neural time course of own- and other-race face processing during a masked priming paradigm. White 6- and 7-year-old children (N = 19) categorized fully visible Asian (other-race) or White (own-race) target faces according to gender. Target faces were preceded by masked same-identity or different-identity prime faces, matching the target for race and gender. We showed an early priming effect on the N100 component, with larger amplitude to different-face pairs than to same-face pairs, and a later race effect on the N200 component, with larger amplitude to own-race face pairs than to other-race face pairs. Critically, race did not interact with priming at any processing stage (P100, N100, P200, N200, or P300). Our results suggest that race could have a temporally limited impact on face processing and that the implicit and unconscious identity processing of own- and other-race faces could be similar in 6- and 7-year-olds, depicting an immature other-race effect during childhood.

The Unconscious Tug-of-War: Exploring the Effect of Stimulus Selection Bias on Creative Problem Solving with Multiple Unconscious Stimuli.

This study innovatively investigated the potential selection bias involved in processing multiple subliminal stimuli during creative problem-solving (CPS). It addresses the existing gap in specialized research on how the handling of multiple unconscious stimuli influences higher-order cognitive processes, particularly creativity. The study utilized a masked priming paradigm and a remote association task (RAT). Two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 presented two stimuli simultaneously, with one being the correct answer, to examine whether there was a bias in the location of subliminal stimuli. In Experiment 2, two stimuli were presented sequentially, with one serving as the answer, to investigate whether there was a temporal bias in unconscious processing. Our findings revealed that when solving easy RATs, subliminal stimuli presented on the left side had a negative priming effect compared to the right side. The results revealed that unconscious processing of subliminal stimuli enhanced performance on difficult CPS. Additionally, a temporal bias was observed, with more recent subliminal stimuli having a stronger effect than earlier stimuli. Unconscious processing can improve CPS, especially for difficult tasks, and there is a bias towards processing stimuli on the left and more recently presented stimuli. These findings contribute to our understanding of unconscious processing, particularly the processing of multiple subliminal stimuli in CPS, and provide insights into the biases that exist in unconscious processing.

Do Psychedelics Facilitate Emergence of Unconscious Psychological Processes?

Psychedelic substances have a long history of use in traditional healing and religious ceremonies worldwide and are increasingly being investigated for their possible therapeutic usage. However, there is still a lack of consensus regarding how best to characterize the psychological effects of psychedelics and how they bring about the positive therapeutic outcomes observed in clinical studies. The aim of this article is to review available evidence from quantitative and qualitative studies on psychedelic-assisted therapy, as well as neurobiological studies, in relation to the hypothesis that psychedelics facilitate the emergence of emotionally charged unconscious material, originally proposed by pioneering psychedelics researcher Stanislav Grof. The reviewed process studies of therapeutic mechanisms in psychedelic-assisted therapy and qualitative studies of treatment participants clearly indicate that the psychedelic experience is associated with the subjective experience of having increased access to and awareness of emotions, memories, and perceptions that are normally avoided or outside of conscious awareness. Brain-imaging studies point to several different neurobiological effects of psychedelics that might be related to these subjective psychological experiences. Available evidence also indicates that this process might constitute an important therapeutic mechanism in psychedelic-assisted therapy, worthy of further investigation.

Get your diverse team to outperform: Navigating through affinity bias

While gender and racial diversity of healthcare organisations has been increasing, and improvements in representation have been made, significant disparities still exist, especially with pipeline progression in organisational rank and leadership level. In addition, once under-represented minority individuals become a part of a team, obstacles continue to inhibit those individuals, in subtle ways, from being fully able to contribute to the teams. One such major unconscious process is affinity bias, which is our subconscious preference for people who resemble ourselves or belong to our social group, as well as distrust and negative attitudes towards those different from us or not part of our group. Subconscious heuristics drive our brain’s cognitive processes for efficiency with the goal of keeping us safe in an uncertain environment, and we need these heuristics in order to function. In highly advanced organisations, however, when relying on the strengths of diverse teams determines the organisation’s competitive edge and financial profitability, affinity bias can undermine the organisation’s performance, and it is crucial that leaders are skilled in navigating its pitfalls.

Managing power and psychiatric training in the United States, 1945–1990

In the wake of their heightened role in addressing the emotional challenges of United States soldiers during World War II, American psychiatrists increasingly argued that their knowledge of human nature, based on interpretation of unconscious processes, was a powerful tool in effecting changes in society. As they turned to training an adequate supply of psychiatrists to meet expanding demand, educators in psychiatry residency programs faced questions about whom to entrust with the power of psychiatric interpretation, how educators’ knowledge about trainees’ own unconscious processes should be harnessed, and how much to adhere to strict psychoanalytic doctrine in training. During the 1970s, social and cultural upheavals outside and inside psychiatry began to dismantle the grand claims of the postwar generation of psychiatrists, while shifts in the 1980s led educators to focus more on seemingly objective educational measures. Trainees’ and critics’ serious questioning of authority and structures in American society, and within psychiatry training programs, was perhaps as much of a factor – if not more – in the shift away from an emphasis on the interpretive power of psychoanalysis in favor of more eclectic and ultimately biological approaches in academic psychiatry.

A theoretical and clinical perspective of an embodied view in psychotherapy of somatic symptoms disorders.

In this paper, we offer some ideas for the treatment of somatoform patients and related pathologies based on the concept of embodiment. Embodiment refers to the interplay between body and mind in behavior. The word refers to giving a body to something, "incarnate". Spinoza wrote extensively about the topic in the 17th century. In the 20th century, picking up on Spinoza's work, Damasio presented extensive and important neuro-scientific evidence that feelings can be direct perceptions of internal body states, substantiating the growing understanding of emotions and feelings as a core component of the embodied experience. Here, we summarize the evidence for the intersection of emotion and cognition in the body, which impinges on the effectiveness of using the body and movement in psychotherapy and the management of somatic symptoms and related disorders. We present evidence indicating that movement would be a way to reach unconscious processes dealing with body-mind interaction and body awareness.