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Consciousness, Metacognition, and the Unconscious

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Consciousness, Metacognition, and the Unconscious 41 Consciousness, Metacognition, and the Unconscious Piotr Winkielman & Jonathan W. Schooler What are we aware of? What do we know about the growing interest in psychology in questions of our own thoughts and feelings? These questions consciousness and metacognition. We then review about consciousness and metacognition lie at the selected findings on consciousness and metacog- heart of social cognition – a field that relies on nition, using an important distinction between concepts and methods of cognitive psychology, mental states that are simply conscious and mental cognitive science, and neuroscience to understand states that are accompanied by rich metacognitive how people think about others and themselves. representations of those states. We then move to a Importantly, these questions need answers not discussion of cognition and emotion in the absence only because they are scientifically fascinating but of consciousness. Throughout, we address neural also because it is practically important to examine correlates of consciousness and metacognition how in daily life people manage to (sometimes) and touch on questions concerning the relation- answer questions like: “What are you thinking ship between social cognition and self-cognition. about right now?”, “How do you feel right now?”, “How much do you want to drink?”, “Do you want to smoke?”, “Do you dislike this social group?”, “Do you find this person attractive?”, “Did you enjoy this piece of music?”, “Did you HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE notice this object?”, “Do you understand this pas- sage of text?”, and “Were you influenced by this Just like the actual phenomena, the history of message?” These standard questions require the thinking about consciousness and metacognition ability of the person to access, evaluate, and undergoes a pattern of waxing and waning. express the cognitive and affective contents of her Descartes famously argued that consciousness is own mind. And though these answers may often the only undeniable reality. Everything else could come to our mind effortlessly, giving the illusion be created by a malicious demon, but our very of “self-transparency,” the process of reaching own thoughts and feelings are necessarily true. them is actually tricky and may be fraught with For Descartes, consciousness also comes with error. After all, not all mental states are conscious. metacognitive transparency, making our own Furthermore, those states that are conscious can mental states self-apparent. It is worth noting this be so in various forms and to different degrees. because the Cartesian view still underlies much of Finally, translating our consciousness into a report everyday intuitions about the mind and, as we may introduce a variety of distortions. describe later, is being challenged by modern Our chapter reviews theorizing and empirical social-cognitive research that argues that even research on consciousness and metacognition, one’s own thoughts may be subject to mis- using the following organizational structure. We representation, in the form of temporal and trans- start with a few historical remarks, highlighting lational dissociations, or may even be completely 55698-Fiske-Ch04.indd698-Fiske-Ch04.indd 5544 22/13/2012/13/2012 99:54:23:54:23 AAMM CONSCIOUSNESS, METACOGNITION, AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 55 obscured, as in the case of unconscious goals and biological vocabulary. Elements of this view are unconscious affect. also visible in modern social cognition when Following some 19th-century philosophers researchers argue that as psychological science (e.g., Husserl, Brentano), early psychologists had identifies more and more simple, low-level, and focused on the nature of intentionality and the thus unconscious mechanisms it will no longer structure of experience (Boring, 1953). Their need complex, high-level concepts, like “con- method – introspection − assumed that the critical sciousness” (e.g., Bargh, 2007). This view is constituents of mental life (thoughts, feelings, related to a position in philosophy called “elimi- volitions) are in principle consciously accessible. native materialism,” which proposes replacing They also argued psychology should be funda- high-level mental concepts with references to low- mentally interested in content-bearing intentional level biological substrates (Churchland, 1981). states (thoughts, intentions, goals), but not so For example, instead of talking about “seeing,” much in non-conscious events (e.g., associative science should talk about specific visual computa- chains, reflexes, physiology), which are best left to tions in the occipital lobe. However, note that this biologists. As we discuss in detail later, these foun- reductionist argument is logically problematic. dational notions are being challenged by modern For one, it confuses the identification of low-level researchers in social cognition who argue that mechanisms with a satisfying explanation of states, such as goals, can operate unconsciously. high-level concepts (Fodor, 1968). But, low-level From the perspective of modern social cogni- explanations often offer an uninteresting or even tion, another interesting historical aspect was obscuring reduction. For example, providing a the early interest in social foundations of self- complete low-level explanation of physical mate- awareness. This was particularly pronounced in rials that money is made out of (paper, metal) is the writing of symbolic interactionists (e.g., not interesting, and does not in any way make the Mead, 1934) as well as some developmental explanations of money in terms of its functions psychologists (e.g., Vygotsky, 1962). For them, superfluous. In fact, it is counter-productive as it self-consciousness is partly created by the neces- occludes relevant properties (e.g., that a $1 coin sity to function in a social community. After all, functions exactly the same as $1 paper bill). social coordination requires the individual to be Furthermore, the argument that consciousness can able to adjust to others, see things from their per- be reduced to smaller, mechanistic, unconscious spective, anticipate their reactions, self-regulate, parts is also problematic because consciousness is and, critically, learn to adapt towards oneself the an emergent phenomenon that requires an interac- stance of a “generalized other.” As we discuss tion of many (possibly dumb) parts, and thus by later, these historical themes are reflected in definition not reducible to any single one of them. contemporary social-cognitive research on self- As an analogy, it is impossible to understand monitoring, self-regulation, and self-awareness. the concept of “driving,” or how a car works by Though consciousness was of central impor- considering its parts separately. tance for the early psychologists, still they admit- In the general experimental psychology, the ted some role for unconscious processes. For anti-consciousness behaviorist stance started to example, Helmholtz proposed that vision involves relax in the mid-1970s when researchers began unconscious inferences, whereas James wrote to tackle issues like controlled and automatic about habits and the subconscious (Kihlstrom, processing (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977), atten- 2007). Behaviorism, and the ambition to make tional selection (Kahneman, 1973), and uncon- psychology “objective” and equal to other natural scious perception (Marcel, 1983), leading to sciences, brought disfavor to the methods of recognition that consciousness is “respectable, introspection and to mentalistic concepts like useful, and probably necessary” (Mandler, 1975). consciousness. Along with this came the belief Now, the legitimacy of the topic is fully reestab- that behavior is ultimately under the control of lished and “everyone who is conscious, is study- the environment, rather than mysterious “internal ing consciousness” (Churchland, 2005). forces.” This behaviorist credo still guides Social cognition researchers have always been some modern researchers in social cognition who in the game of understanding “consciousness,” tend to highlight how much of social behavior is though, often with the goal of demonstrating its under “environmental control,” at least in the limits. Thus, a pioneering study showed that a sense of “power of the situation” (e.g., Bargh, stimulus’ value can be enhanced via its uncon- 2007). Behaviorists also assumed that providing scious mere exposure (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, mechanistic explanations of behavior will make 1980). Another pioneering study showed that peo- concepts like “consciousness” and “volition” dis- ple’s conscious beliefs about the causes of their appear from the psychological vocabulary, the own behavior can be at odds with actual causes way concepts like “phlogiston’ or “life force” (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). These early studies disappeared from modern scientific physical and opened the way to a wealth of demonstrations of 55698-Fiske-Ch04.indd698-Fiske-Ch04.indd 5555 22/13/2012/13/2012 99:54:23:54:23 AAMM 56 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL COGNITION unconscious influences on social perception, emotion, intelligence), and how they can improve affect, reasoning, decision, and behavior (e.g., them to make their cognitive functioning more Bargh, 1989; Wegner, 2002; Wilson, 2002). Some efficient. Accordingly, research on the develop- researchers became so excited about these find- mental and educational aspect of metacognition ings that they began to argue that “most of a has a long history (Flavell, 1979). This history person’s everyday life is determined
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