The adaptive unconscious, first coined by social psychologist Daniel Wegner in 2002,[1] is described as a set of mental processes that is able to affect judgement and decision-making, but is out of reach of the conscious mind. It is thought to be adaptive as it helps to keep the organism alive.[2] Architecturally, the adaptive unconscious is said to be unreachable because it is buried in an unknown part of the brain. This type of thinking evolved earlier than the conscious mind, enabling the mind to transform information and think in ways that enhance an organism's survival. It can be described as a quick sizing up of the world which interprets information and decides how to act very quickly and outside the conscious view. The adaptive unconscious is active in everyday activities such as learning new material, detecting patterns, and filtering information. It is also characterized by being unconscious, unintentional, uncontrollable, and efficient without requiring cognitive tools. Lacking the need for cognitive tools does not make the adaptive unconscious any less useful than the conscious mind as the adaptive unconscious allows for processes like memory formation, physical balancing, language, learning, and some emotional and personalities processes that includes judgement, decision making, impression formation, evaluations, and goal pursuing. Despite being useful, the series of processes of the adaptive unconscious will not always result in accurate or correct decisions by the organism. The adaptive unconscious is affected by things like emotional reaction, estimations, and experience and is thus inclined to stereotyping and schema which can lead to inaccuracy in decision making. The adaptive conscious does however help decision making to eliminate cognitive biases such as prejudice because of its lack of cognitive tools.
^Wegner, Daniel W. (2002). The Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press.
^Wilson, Timothy (2003). "Knowing when to ask:Introspection and the Adaptive Unconscious". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 10: 131–140.
and 23 Related for: Adaptive unconscious information
conscious mind. It is thought to be adaptive as it helps to keep the organism alive. Architecturally, the adaptiveunconscious is said to be unreachable because...
theory of the adaptiveunconscious. Together with William Hamilton and Thomas Laycock they provided the foundations on which adaptiveunconscious is based...
popular books on psychology, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the AdaptiveUnconscious and Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change...
reveal something about everyday introspection. The theory of the adaptiveunconscious suggests that a very large proportion of mental processes, even "high-level"...
(between operator and subject) and pre-calibrated set of responses. Adaptiveunconscious – psychological theoryPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a...
Wilson, Timothy D. (2002). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the AdaptiveUnconscious. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00936-3. Windt, Jennifer M...
Wilson, Timothy D. (2002). Strangers to ourselves: discovering the adaptiveunconscious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01382-4....
been too far-reaching. He instead relied on the theory that the adaptiveunconscious does much of the moment-to-moment work of perception and behaviour...
aspects of the less adaptive solutions (also called "compromise formations") conscious so that they can be rethought, and more adaptive solutions found....
in a wide range of research suggests [this] shift in framework". Adaptiveunconscious Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will Dick Swaab Neural...
In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts...
idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes...
currently known as the "adaptive paradigm". This is a distinctive model of the mind, and particularly of the mind's unconscious component, significantly...
humor, like dreams, can be related to unconscious content. In the 1905 book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (German: Der Witz und seine Beziehung...
especially complex adaptive systems (CAS), it has been argued that his vision of archetypes as a stratum in the collective unconscious, corresponds to nodal...
of the unconscious in Being and Nothingness (1943), claiming that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also attempts to adapt some of...
Wilson, Timothy D. (2002). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the AdaptiveUnconscious. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01382-7...
qualitatively account for a large set of matched pairs of conscious and unconscious processes. GWT has been influential in modeling consciousness and higher-order...
"Introspection and self-narratives". Strangers to ourselves: discovering the adaptiveunconscious. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 159–182...
Hidden personality is the part of the personality that is determined by unconscious processes. The basic assumption of Freud's psychoanalytic view of the...
ever - to deal with the implications of introspection illusion, the adaptiveunconscious, affective forecasting, and their implications for modern ethical...
Global Information