From the NY Times: Who’s Minding the Mind?

Posted by Kendall Harmon

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. 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.

More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology

6 Comments
Posted August 2, 2007 at 1:54 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. D. C. Toedt wrote:

We know so little about why people behave the way they do; when we talk about undesirable behavior as “sin,” I wonder if it’s like talking about disease as an imbalance in the four humours.

August 2, 4:21 pm | [comment link]
2. Alice Linsley wrote:

The human brain is awesome! While we go about our daily routines, attending to so many details consciously, we are unconsciously calculating distances, deciphering symbols and codes, intuiting, cross-referencing, and selecting images and information.  On this subconscious level we are always making sense of the world. How wonderfully are we made in the image and likeness of God!

August 2, 8:00 pm | [comment link]
3. Adam 12 wrote:

Maybe we should post large words like “Bible” and “scriptural” on the bulletin boards of revisionist parishes…

August 2, 9:12 pm | [comment link]
4. Bill Matz wrote:

Interesting study that should make reappraisers re-think making “experience” the primary source of theological authority.

August 3, 12:56 am | [comment link]
5. Deja Vu wrote:

Here’s a study result from the article that seems to me to be consistent with Jesus saying to make it right with the one you harmed before seeking to cleanse your guilt at the temple. In this study, the cleasing ritual works so well, that people are less likely to subsequently help others:

In one 2006 study, for instance, researchers had Northwestern University undergraduates recall an unethical deed from their past, like betraying a friend, or a virtuous one, like returning lost property. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, an antiseptic wipe or a pencil; and those who had recalled bad behavior were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. They had been primed to psychologically “cleanse” their consciences.
Once their hands were wiped, the students became less likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project. Their hands were clean: the unconscious goal had been satisfied and now was being suppressed, the findings suggest.

August 3, 10:46 am | [comment link]
6. Philip Snyder wrote:

D.C.  Sin isn’t “unacceptable behavior.”  Sin is a state of rebellion against God.  It is choosing to put something (anything) in the place of God and that includes our own desires.  For some reason, we are born in rebellion against God and seek to gratify our own desires rather than to please God.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

August 3, 8:04 pm | [comment link]
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