Conscious Mind Vs Conscious Analysis

We consider goal setting, interpretation, and evaluation to be the proper work of the conscious mind, but the unconscious does these things as well. The adaptive unconscious is probably older than the conscious mind. The newer, conscious mind sometimes creates the illusion of control: will is sometimes an illusion. Consciousness, to use an analogy, is like Ronald Reagan: it appears to be the executive, but in fact does not have the amount of control we assume it does.

So what are the specific difference between the two systems? The adaptive unconscious has multiple systems; is more like an on-line pattern detector; is concerned with the here-and-now; is automatic (fast, unintentional, uncontrollable, effortless); is rigid; is precocious; and is sensitive to negative information. In contrast, consciousness is a single system; is a post-facto fact checker and balancer; takes the long view; is controlled (slow, intentional, controllable, effortful); is flexible; is slower to develop; and is sensitive to positive information. …show more content…
An example where both systems come into play: you see a “snake.” You perform an initial crude analysis (“FUCK! Snake!”) followed by a more detailed, conscious analysis (“Oh. It was just a stick.”) However, the systems can also work at cross-purposes. For instance, the conscious mind plans for the future. But those plans can lead to results which we end up unhappy with. To avoid this, we should recognize our non-conscious needs and traits and factor them in when planning. Also, automatic thinking is fast; non-conscious; unintentional; uncontrollable; and effortless. But this can lead us to false conclusions, such as in stereotyping. Finally, the adaptive unconscious is rigid: we bend information to fit out preconceptions. We can draw the wrong conclusions, for instance, from a too-small a sample. We can make our expectations come