The Unconscious Mind
Number One: The Face on Mars
In 1976, a NASA satellite discovered something shocking on Mars. Buried amongst the rock formations, the satellite captured an eerie gray face staring back into the camera. But it wasn't really a face; it was just a mesa. From the right angle, it looked kind of like a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
So why do so many people insist they see a face on the planet's surface? The face on Mars is a classic example of pareidolia, a mistake that our unconscious makes on a regular basis. When we see something that follows a vaguely familiar pattern, our brain just jumps the gun; it fills in the blanks. That's why you see animals in the clouds, people lurking in the shadows, or the infamous rabbit hiding in the moon.
Our pareidolia is especially sensitive to faces, which is why you see them on the sides of buildings and the front bumpers of cars. But pareidolia isn't just a visual illusion. If you've ever heard whispers coming from your noisy air-conditioner, then your brain has fallen for the exact same unconscious trick. No one was actually talking, just like there isn't really a face on Mars. But the pattern was close enough to fool your unconscious mind.
Number Two: Imagination Blindness
Try to imagine an elephant. Picture it in as much detail as you possibly can: the size, the color. Okay, maybe it's walking around or lifting its trunk. If you can generate this kind of mental image, your imagination is working like it's supposed to. You're able to conjure up imaginary objects based on past knowledge and experience.
Even if you can't see an elephant standing in front of you, you can still create an accurate vision in your head. But not everyone's brain can do this. In fact, some people develop a condition called aphantasia, which stops your imagination from creating those mental images. If someone with aphantasia tried to imagine an elephant, well, nothing would happen. Their mind would just go blank.
Number Three: Speaking Through Your Body
Your unconscious communicates with your conscious through all kinds of different avenues. It talks through your dreams, your random thoughts, and sometimes changes in your body. Stomach problems, for example, are a common sign of deeper unconscious issues.
Even if your conscious thinks nothing's wrong, your unconscious might be telling a different story.
Number Four: Snap Judgments
Your brain makes very quick decisions when meeting new people. But how quick are they, and how accurate are these choices in the long run? Two researchers from Stanford asked the same pair of questions, so they gathered a group of participants and measured their snap judgments at different intervals.
It turns out it only took one or two seconds for people to judge everything from success to intelligence. It doesn't matter if you know nothing beforehand; all you need is that tiny interval to make all kinds of assumptions about someone's character. What's even more surprising is that these snap judgments are usually right the vast majority of the time.
Your assumptions about the people around you are spot-on. But here's the bad news: no one has figured out the perfect recipe for a positive snap judgment. All we know is that things like good personal hygiene and a warm smile will nudge you in the right direction.
Number Five: Knowing Our Limits
Do you stare at your feet when you walk or look at your fingers whenever you pick something up? Of course not. Most of the time, you don't give your extremities more than a passing glance. That's because your unconscious has memorized the physical boundaries of your body. It's created something neurologists call a body image, which helps you move seamlessly through space and perform complicated mechanical tasks.
But sometimes your body and your body image don't match. This happens to many people who undergo one or more amputations. They experience something called phantom limb syndrome. Basically, their brain thinks their missing limb is still there, even if it isn't. It's very common for phantom limbs to move around like normal hands or feet; they'll point, they'll wave, they'll even grab on to things in the world around you.
These phantom limbs can stick around for months or even years because even though your body has changed shape, your unconscious is still clinging to the past.
Number Six: Understanding the Present
Unlike your conscious, which understands the past and the future, your unconscious lives exclusively in the present. It's consistently focused on what's currently happening and nothing else. Now, that doesn't mean your unconscious doesn't store information from the past or weigh in on decisions for the future.
But making sense of time requires more complex thinking and reasoning skills, which your unconscious just can't do on its own.
Number Seven: An Illogical Brain
In the same vein, your unconscious doesn't really understand logic either. It relies on instincts and desires to govern its behavior. Sometimes that can be helpful, but to navigate our complicated lives, we need something much more thoughtful at the helm. Luckily, we've got our conscious mind to make sense of our unconscious desires.
Your unconscious is vital to your survival, but without your conscious, you wouldn't stand a chance at living a normal life.
Number Eight: Reverse Dreaming
When you fall asleep, the conscious part of your brain turns off, but your subconscious remains active and alert. It's storing memories and running maintenance. That's why you end up experiencing this weird collage of familiar images and feelings in your dreams.
But what if the opposite happened? Can your conscious stay awake while your unconscious goes to bed? Not exactly, but we can get close. Sleep paralysis is a unique state where your conscious brain is aware while the rest of your body is stuck in a sleep-like state. In other words, you can freely move around your mind almost like a lucid daydream.
Number Nine: Your Unconscious Clock
Have you ever woken up right before your alarm goes off? Well, that's because your unconscious mind is still keeping track of the time while you sleep. But your unconscious doesn't count down the minutes or seconds; it has a built-in biological clock that wakes you up after a certain period of time.
But that's not even the most amazing part. Your unconscious is extraordinarily accurate. A group of researchers wanted to see if your unconscious could still keep track even when it was tricked into believing it had woken up at the right time. To do this, they told people they'd get them up at 9:00 a.m. Then, at 6:00 a.m., they woke participants up and told them it was 9:00 in the morning.
But their biological clocks didn't change at all. Even when your conscious gets tricked, your unconscious might see right through it.
Number Ten: Unconscious Competence
Each time you learn a new skill, you go through four stages of competence. Okay, let's say you want to learn how to throw a frisbee. At first, you may not even realize you can't throw a frisbee; it's just something you've never tried before. But when you finally give it a shot, you discover that you don't know how, which brings you to step two: you're consciously bad at it, but you want to get better.
So you practice and practice until you can throw a frisbee pretty well when you try your best. That means you're at the third step: you are consciously good at it. Most people think the learning process stops there, but there's actually one more level called unconscious competence. That means you're good at something without even thinking. In other words, mastering any skill starts and stops with your unconscious.
Number Eleven: The Internet in Your Head
How much information can your brain actually store? Using over 85 billion nerve cells, your brain has been collecting and storing information for your entire life. You might not have access to all of it, but your subconscious actually holds as much information as the Internet did in 2007. Nowadays, the Internet's gotten quite a bit more complicated.
But from 1983 to 2007, the entire world was using an online network that was smaller than a single human brain.
Number Twelve: Flexible Truths
Your unconscious is pretty gullible, almost like a little kid. Instead of asking questions and searching for mistakes, it pretty much believes whatever you tell it. If something slips past your conscious, then your subconscious will take it as a fact. It'll store it in your brain and start incorporating that detail into your personality.
That's usually how irrational fears like phobias come into being. Something crazy slips through, but your unconscious believes every word of it.
Number Thirteen: A Language of Metaphors
Your unconscious doesn't speak in the same way we do. Instead of using words, your unconscious communicates through images, feelings, and ideas. Just imagine one of those riddles where you use images to figure out the mystery word.
Your unconscious is a lot like that, which means your dreams are essentially one big coded message from your unconscious mind.
Number Fourteen: Unconscious Fatigue
Physical exhaustion is another way our unconscious controls our behavior. If it wants you to change your focus, it'll drain your energy or make you yawn. So even if you think you're making conscious decisions, your unconscious might be controlling you from the shadows.
Number Fifteen: Understanding the World
When do you think your worldview changes the most? Our conscious shifts many times during our later years because it's almost constantly changing throughout your life. But your unconscious changes the most when you're young.
Most of your unconscious growth happens between the ages of 2 and 7. In other words, your unconscious mind develops through the eyes of a child.
Additional Resources
Explore more about the unconscious mind on our website:
