From the reading that I have been doing, it seems that our minds do a lot of thinking that we aren’t conscious of.
I find our startle reflex interesting. To be startled, something unexpected has to happen. A bump upstairs can start your heart racing if you think you are the only one home. To catch the unexpected event like the thump, your unconscious mind has to process all the information that is flowing into it and check it to see if it fits what it expects. Your unconscious mind is identifying and analysing what is going on around you to the point where it can tell if something is amiss.
Think about word scramble puzzles like jumble. An example from today’s puzzle is IBARR. After some time staring at the letters, the word BRIAR pops into my head. Where does it come from? I don’t consciously think through all the possible arrangements of the letters. Somewhere down in the depths of my subconscious mind something is working through the problem. Even more interestingly, when I do the puzzles a lot, I get better at doing them. My subconscious mind seems to be learning.
Our brains are doing a lot of interesting and complex thinking that we aren’t aware of. To understand how we make decisions, I think we need to understand what is going on below the surface in our minds.
