The reality of unconscious mental processing leading sometimes to the Aha! moment is increasingly recognized by the scientific community. Research attention is shifting to conducting experiments with an aim to understand more about this effect. A study just published in Thinking & Reasoning (2017) is called “Insightful solutions are correct more often than analytic solutions”. The authors (Salvi, Kounios, Beeman, Bowden, and Bricolo) conducted a variety of puzzles comparing insightful solutions to analytically determined answers. They were able to show that those answers coming into consciousness from unconscious processing were more likely to be correct than answers constructed through conscious reasoning. A timed deadline was imposed on each puzzle which created anxiety among test subjects. A majority of answers tossed out just before the imposed deadline appeared to be either a guess or analytically derived and often wrong. The authors conclude that encouraging insightful solutions to learning and problem solving requires a relaxed atmosphere where the factor of time is not present. The need for incubation time is mentioned in my book on page 56 where an argument is made that formal education is too often run by the clock thus imposing a deadline on thought. As this research report indicates, deadlines short circuit the use of intuitive processes hence sometimes leading to wrong solutions.
Tag Archives: subconscious decisions
Evidence for Unconscious Mental Problem Solving
When setting out to write my book on tacit knowledge, I aimed attention upon current research in neuroscience to uncover evidence that Polanyi was correct in his description of tacit knowledge as a subconscious mental processing activity. Since the publication of my book, I discovered a 2013 study by Creswell, Bursley, and Satpute (Carnegie Mellon and Northeastern Universities) that was hailed as the first neural evidence for unconscious thought processing at work. The investigators offered participants information about desirable and undesirable characteristics of four hypothetical automobiles. One of the cars was by design obviously better, one was worse, and the other two merely ok. Experimental conditions offered some participants an opportunity to consciously evaluate the characteristics of the vehicles and rate them. Others were asked for an immediate ranking (no time to consciously think about it) and the third group had to complete a demanding cognitive task (using up their conscious awareness) before ranking the vehicles. The best rankings curiously came from the group that was mentally tied up with the competing conscious task. Apparently, while engrossed in that task, an unconscious mental processing was underway that led to the best ranking in comparison to those who offered an immediate ranking or those who consciously thought about the rankings. To prove the existence of this unconscious processing system in the brain, all subjects were hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging device. Brain activation was monitored during the trials. The investigators were able to demonstrate that certain brain regions associated with the rating task were activated during the competing cognitive task hence offering those participants access to portions of their brains that performed the ratings unconsciously. Skeptics for the presence of unconscious mental operations are gradually losing the battle!