by Nastasia Griffioen

Consciousness is a fascinating thing. There are few things as intimate and our own as our
feeling of being conscious, i.e. being aware. Dont let it fool you though, it might be the
ultimate one-way mirror: if we happen to be on one side of it, it provides us with information
about ourselves, we can look through it giving us the feeling that we have insight into our
own mind. However, more often than we might think, we end up on the other side of the
mirror, seeing nothing more than our own reflection, showing us nothing more than we
already knew, yet fooling us into thinking we know what actually happens on the other
side.

For many years, it has been assumed that
conscious thought is in charge of our behaviour.
This is hardly a surprising tendency, given the fact
that our consciousness is with us as we go most
of the time. However, the last few decades of
research in psychology have found indications that
consciousness might pretty much be out of the loop
when it comes to the inner processes that guide
our behaviour, such as motivations. Instead, it
seems that the unconscious is much better
informed and is even capable of guiding and
launching behaviour.
First off, lets look at situations in which
consciousness fails to provide us with information
about our actions. It has repeatedly been
demonstrated that people, when explaining their
own actions, overlook factors that unequivocally
influenced the behaviour
1
. Instead, people tend to
make up explanations
2
, even concerning decisions
that were not made by them
3
. Obviously, if the
consciousness is not able to recognise its own
actions, it seems highly unlikely that it controls
action in the way most people assume
consciousness would.
Now, lets look where the unconscious gets
us. It is suggested by a growing body of research
that most of our behaviours are in fact initiated in
an automatic and unconscious fashion in reaction
to our environments
4
. This is illustrated by the fact
that mere exposure to words related to certain
states of mind (e.g. achievement) actually can
trigger a range of behaviours aimed at improving
performance in subsequent tasks
5
. Apparently,
behavioural initiation and regulation of even
complex behaviours such as regulating
performance is perfectly well maintained despite
the person being unaware of all whats going on.
So, if the conscious is often mistaken about
what it does and why while the unconscious seems
to be perfectly capable of controlling behaviour,
why are we conscious then?
It would be strange to assume we possess such
a complex feature as consciousness without it having
any function in determining behaviour (although this
view has been proposed by some
6
). Instead of
controlling actions in a moment-to-moment
manner, consciousness might be very useful in a
number of other ways.
Humans are highly social beings and
although we surely arent unique in that respect,
the concept of culture that has been developed by
the homo sapiens takes being a social creature to
a whole other level. This very feature of human
societies might be very tightly related to us being
conscious, another feature that (as is commonly
assumed) distinguishes us from most other
animals.
Thus, the function of consciousness might lie
in the social and cultural, for instance in relation to
language. In fact, conscious thought might serve
communication, a vital component of successful
social situations. Consistent with this assertion is
the seemingly complementary emergence of
speech and consciousness, both in phylogeny and
in development
7
.
Apart from being essential for communication
between individuals, conscious thought also allows
for resolution of conflicts, whether they be internal
8

or originating from society and culture. Regarding
the latter, conscious thoughts allow us to reflect on
past and future and travel through time, in some
cases creating counterfactuals thoughts on how
things might have been had we behaved
differently. This makes it possible for us to
anticipate outcomes or social reactions and adjust
to (group) expectations and norms in all kinds of
situations
9, 10
. Through conscious thought, people
are able to take a certain perspective, which in turn
enhances the coordination of social situations
11
.
Taking all of the above into consideration,
hopefully it has become clearer that our
consciousness might not be the best source of
information when we seek to understand what we
do and more importantly why we do it. Oftentimes,
we have our unconscious to thank for the
behaviours we execute and goals we realise.
However, surely it has also become clear that
despite consciousness being less informative than
we thought, the functionality might lie in other
areas, confirming our instincts: that our
day-dreams, fantasies and counterfactual thoughts
are indeed more than redundant epiphenomena.
R E F E R E N C E S

1. Nisbett, R. E. & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling
more than we can know: Verbal reports on
mental processes. Psycholocial Review, 84,
231-259.

2. Gazzaniga, M. S. (2000). Cerebral
specialization and interhemispheric
communication: Does the corpus callosum
enable the human condition? Brain, 123, 1293-
1326.

3. Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikstrm, S., &
Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches
between intention and outcoume in a simple
decision task. Science, 310, 116-119.

4. Bargh, J. A., & Morsella, E. (2008). The
unconscious mind. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 3, 73-79.

5. Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A.
Y., Barndollar, K., & Trtschel, R. (2001). The
automated will: Non-conscious activation and
pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1014-
1027.

6. Dijksterhuis, A., Aarts, H., & Smith, P. K.
(2005). The power of the subliminal: Subliminal
perception and possible applications. In R.
Hassin, J. Uleman and J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The
New Consciousness (pp. 77-106). New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.



























7. Baumeister, R. F., & Masicampo, E. J.
(2010). Conscious thought is for facilitating
social and cultural interactions: How mental
simulations serve animal-culture interface.
Psychological Review, 117, 945-971.

8. Morsella, E. (2005). The function of
phenomenal states: Supramodular interaction
theory. Psychological Review, 112, 1000-1021.

9. Epstude, K., & Roese, N. J. (2008). The
functional theory of counterfactual thinking.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12,
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10. Zeelenberg, M., & Beattie, J. (1997).
Consequences of regret aversion 2: Additional
evidence for effects of feedback on decision
making. Organizational Behavior and Human
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11. Galinsky, A. D., Maddux, W. W., Gillin, D., &
White, J. B. (2008). Why it pays to get inside
the head of your opponent: The differential
effects of perspective taking and empathy in
negotiations. Psychological Science, 19, 378-
384.