Dijksterhuis (2025)

Question 1

The idea that people must have an unconscious

Answer 1

There is so much going on in our brains, and the capacity of consciousness is so small, that there must be much more than just consciousness

Question 2

Unconscious processes

Answer 2

Often very important for human functioning, and many phenomena, and decision decision making are impossible to fully understand without incorporating the role of unconscious processes

Question 3

Akrasia

Answer 3

“The lack of control over oneself.” Socrates argued that free will is limited, after he noticed people often do things they really do not want to do

Question 4

Plotinus

Answer 4

The first to allude to the possibility of unconscious psychological processes in writing

Question 5

Descartes’ dualism

Answer 5

Entailed a strict distinction between body and mind. According to him, the mind produces psychological processes and everything going on in our minds is by definition conscious

Question 6

Cartesian catastrophe

Answer 6

Refers to the idea that mental processes taking place outside conscious awareness are rendered impossible

Question 7

Freud

Answer 7

Argued that human behavior never starts with a conscious process
He argued that we may become consciously aware of many things, but these experiences do not hover in the air before they reach us. They are prepared, somehow and somewhere

Question 8

Watt experiment

Answer 8

Showed that we are consciously aware of the results of mental processes. Thinking was divided into four stages; instructions, presentation of the noun, the search for an appropriate association, and the verbalisation of the reply. Third was introspectively blank. The thinking was unconscious and participants were only conscious of the answer

Question 9

Libet experiment

Answer 9

Replicated the Kornhuber & Deecke experiment and added a measure for the conscious awareness of the decision to act. Showed that conscious decisions follow unconscious preparation and precede the actual execution of the action

Question 10

Kornhuber & Deecker experiment

Answer 10

Tested the idea that we unconsciously prepare an action before we are conscious of this action. Showed that the first sign of unconscious preparation preceded an action

Question 11

Mere exposure

Answer 11

Does not require conscious awareness of the object of an attitude. Mere-exposure effects occur even when novel stimuli are presented subliminally for extremely short durations

Question 12

Prejudice

Answer 12

Research on unconscious processes improves our understanding. People automatically categorise others according to their race. This unconsciously leads to the activation of associated cultural stereotypes. Everyone unconsciously activates cultural stereotypes, even for people who do not want to stereotype

Question 13

Creativity

Answer 13

Usually seen as the result of a three-stage process; (1) Attending to a problem consciously, (2) Unconscious incubation stage, and (3) Conscious stage; the creative product needs to be verbalised and communicated

Question 14

Attending to a problem consciously

Answer 14

Allows necessary information to be gathered and organised

Question 15

Incubation stage

Answer 15

Problem is set aside for a while, which sometimes leads to a “Eureka experience”

Question 16

“Eureka” experience

Answer 16

The creative product enters consciousness

Question 17

Decision making

Answer 17

Recently encoded information is further processed unconsciously when people have the goal to do so