An article in the New York Times earlier this week describes how our brains respond to things we’re unaware of:
New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.
I advocate rearranging the furniture in the office if it improves learning and productivity, but I wonder if I’ve been taking it far enough.
Walking along the cinderblock corridors of a weapons factory the next day, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of murals might modify the workers’ behavior.
Unfortunately, this is sort of like the placebo effect: if you’re in on the secret, the magic doesn’t work. I guess I’ll put away my statue of a thin, athletic guy.
Using subtle cues for self-improvement is something like trying to tickle yourself, Dr. Bargh said: priming doesn’t work if you’re aware of it. Manipulating others, while possible, is dicey. “We know that as soon as people feel they’re being manipulated, they do the opposite; it backfires,” he said.
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3 comments ↓
Pavlov would be proud!
Sorry, Jay. I posted this initially without my ID.
From my point of view as an interculturalist I would want to ask where the associations with the smell of cleaning fluid or the meaning of a briefcase come from and why they produce specific and rather predictable results. Would they do the same in all cultures (e.g. in cultures where cleaning fluid and briefcases don’t exist)? The researchers don’t go beyond the hypothesis that the object has a specific and stable meaning for the subconscious mind of the individual. They don’t ask themselves if the attributed “subconscious” meaning is inherent in the object or derived from a cultural context. If they had, they might have begun looking for a further dimension that would provide a stronger, less magical explanation of the relationship between perception and behaviour. The objects convey information about the intentions and orientations of other people present (even if unseen) and the subjects who perceive the culturally loaded object (whether by sight, smell, touch, etc.) adapt their behaviour — subconsciously, of course — to the “intentional social framework” implied by the presence of the object. Moreover, in almost all cases the signs implicitly point to structures of social authority. The reactions would therefore be conditioned by social suppositions and not purely symbolic associations. If this were borne out and documented, it would suggest that our reptilian subconscious is also culturally structured, which would appear to be practically the opposite of what the dominant theoretical interpretation suggests. (Remember that Jacques Lacan believed that the Freudian unconscious — not quite the same thing as the “subconscious” — is structured like a language, and inevitably by the particular language we speak.
This kind of experimental science is unquestionably interesting for the understanding of culture and possibly for developing better training methodologies for sensitising people to what culture is and how it works for them. But it’s also interesting as an example of culture’s influence on the seemingly “objective” world of science. In the individualist western culture that produced these studies, the focus is so strongly placed on the individual mind and personality that the social (or collectivist) dimension lies helplessly beyond the researchers purview. This focus on brain/mind mechanics in turn reinforces a representation of the mind as something internal (inside the skull), individual and, when the surprises are duly documented, ultimately magical! That in itself is a powerful cultural construct whose bases are nevertheless being contested by philosophers (Wittgenstein and his followers) and cognitive scientists such as UC Berkeley’s Alva Noë (”Action in Perception” — a book focused entirely on perception that can nevertheless tell us a lot about how culture is constructed through experience).
Peter, mon ami, I am glad I read your anonymous post before finding out who it was from.
Asking whether the cleaning fluid and briefcase would have the same influence in other cultures is so obvious, I thought some goof-ball philosopher was posting the comment. In some lands, one might run the experiment with a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita or an abalone shell on the table. The article in the Times merely reported on a finding in the States; they didn’t claim universality. Nor did they address what Ludwig W. would have thought.
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