Understanding MindBrain

 
 
Random Article


 
Latest Posts
 

Nonconscious goals and ‘mysterious moods’

 

 
Overview
 

 
Summary
 
 
 
 
 


 


Bottom Line

Are you in control of your faculties? When you suddenly are in a bad mood, do you really know why? Why you can be in a bad mood without knowing why Carl Gustav Jung, one of the early psychoanalysts, once said that just as we cannot see stars in daytime because it is too bright, […]

1
Posted May 28, 2002 by thomasr

 
Full Article
 
 

article_image-3.jpegAre you in control of your faculties? When you suddenly are in a bad mood, do you really know why?

Why you can be in a bad mood without knowing why

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the early psychoanalysts, once said that just as we cannot see stars in daytime because it is too bright, dreams never stop when we are awake; we just cannot see them. In the same manner, the core hypothesis of Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory was that most mental activity is unconscious. But scientific evidence on this issue has been rather sparse.

Enter Tanya Chartrand, PhD and Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Ohio State University. In an upcoming article, Chartrand shows evidence that “mystery moods” may be the result of how well people achieve goals they did not know they had. If we succeed at an unconscious goal, we may be in a good mood. If we fail, we may suddenly feel down without knowing why.

Chartrand has conducted a variety of studies of what happens when people Non-conscious motivation is an everyday phenomenon fail or achieve nonconscious goals. In one study, she suggested the idea of achievement to a group of students by using words like “strive”, “success” and “achieve”. Next, Chartrand gave half of the students an easy puzzle that all were likely to solve; and half received an impossible puzzle that guaranteed failure. The students then filled out a mood questionnaire.

The results were striking: the students who were primed to think of achievement showed significant mood changes if they succeeded or failed. A control group with no priming showed no mood changes.

On June 15, at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Chartrand suggested that nonconscious goals play an important role in everyday life – for students in school or employees at work, to people at parties. We may start consciously wanting to be brilliant and charming at parties, winning friends and lovers. Over time, these goals might be linked in memory with the party environment. The original goals may fade from consciousness, but they may be triggered again by the party environment, so that we unconsciously want to be brilliant and charming every time we attend a party. If reality does not cooperate, we may find ourselves in a negative mood.

What may the function of unconscious goals be? Chartrand speculates that they save us cognitive resources, since we are relieved from constantly making judgements and decisions. If we constantly have to think about our goals we would not be able to do anything else.

These findings could be useful in treating mood disorders, like depression and anxiety. Depressed patients have a bias towards negative thoughts (Weisbrod et al., 1999). Perhaps they cling to unconscious goals that are unrealistic, and have disappointing experiences as a result. Talking about unconscious goals might make it possible for them to change, to avoid too much disappointment.

Copyright © 2002 T.Z. Ramsøy

Further Reading

Prof. Tanya Chartrand homepage 1 and homepage 2

Keywords: Mystery moods, semantic priming, nonconscious goals, automatic processing, social environment

References

Chartrand, T. L. (under review). Mystery moods and perplexing performance: Consequences of succeeding and failing at a nonconscious goal.

Chartrand, T. L. & Bargh, J. A. (in press). Guiding light: Nonconscious goal pursuit. To appear in A. Tesser, D. Stapel, & J. Wood (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on self and identity (vol. 2). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association Press.

Bargh, J.A. & Chartrand, T.L. (2000). The mind in the middle: A practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In H. Reis & C. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Social Psychology (pp. 253-285). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54, 462-479.

Weisbrod, M. (1999). Emotional priming in depressed patients. German J Psychiatry, 2, 19-47.


thomasr

 


One Comment


  1.  

    Chartrand seeks support from Jung and Freud for her notion in respect with her “nonconscious goals” analysis.

    Jung’s analogy lacks some accuracy. Dreams, according to my own point of view, are of two kinds: 1)Night dreams: Those projected screen-show ones (like a movie film played for the self to watch/engage in happy/nightmares to be pleased/displeased respectively), or just like a copy of this very world with its own distinctive different/various mystries/obscurities. 2)Day dreams: Those ones which are only verbal i.e, just a distraction/ abstractedness or you may even call it absent-mindedness: Merely imagined images or, where as those ‘lived’ or ‘perceived in night dreams, especially those lucid ones are as Dr. Alan Wolf (Captain Quantum; a physicist and then a seculative physicist/Shamanist and a lucid dreamer)puts it “virtual images”- (as I remember)in other words as virtual reality. The daytime dreams talked about by Jung are nothing more than thoughts, mere thoughts, whereas the stars are always “there” during the day or at night i.e, unseen, whatever causes there may be for their invisibility, or seen. As for Freud’s theory which includes the notion that “most mental activity is unconsious”, Chartrand’s say in this respect:
    “But scientific evidence on this issue has been rather sparse” may suffice. Nonetheless, I want to add: Some psychologists, according to “Wikipedia” information on their website, divide the mind or its aspects to three areas: The Conscious, The Sub-conscious, and The Unconsious/Nonconsious, with some confusion in Un/Non syllables/prefixes. I do believe and seize the opportunity here to confirm the availability of the three. Perhaps the following lines concluding my comment would partially help explain my belief in the posssible existence of the three. Before we fall in deep sleep, with closed eyes, a thinking stage of continuous/intermittent imagined situations/imaginary images would flow while we are quite conscious, a state of consciousness preceeding the nonconscious one as the following or part of such thoughts begin to visualize in night dreams- hopefully happy ones).





Leave a Response