why we learn

I just finished listening to Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, a book by Malcomb Gladwell. This book is about rapid cognition and how accurate our instinctive responses can be. Some of the examples that Gladwell uses are related to race. One striking example of the power of the unconscious is an experiment he cites in which half of the randomly assigned participants, all African Americans, were asked to indicate their race prior to answering 20 questions from the GRE. The group of participants who were required to do so scored, on average, half as well as the control group. Evidence, Gladwell contends, that even African American’s perception of African Americans can be so negative as to adversely effect their performance, as indicated by the lower scores.

Later, Gladwell describes The Implicit Association Test (IAT), which tests individual’s instinctive association between pairs of words or images. In its most famous form, it assesses people’s underlying racial prejudices. You can take the test your self here. You’ll have to click through a couple screens and then choose the “Race IAT”. I’ve just finished taking it myself, and the summary page states the following.

• 27% of respondents have a strong automatic preference for White people
• 27% of respondents have a moderate automatic preference for White people
• 16% of respondents have a slight automatic preference for White people
• 17% of respondents have a no automatic preference between Black people and White people
• 6% of respondents have a slight automatic preference for Black people
• 4% of respondents have a moderate automatic preference for Black people
• 2% of respondents have a strong automatic preference for Black people

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I downloaded the audiobook of Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell from iTunes last night. I’ve listened to about a third of it today, and it’s wonderful. One of the byproducts of the information contained within is a softening in my position on behaviorism. Some of the illustrations that the author uses to explain unconscious thought scream classical conditioning. Or at least some form of conditioning. For anyone interested, the IAT (Implicit Association Test) is a good example of how, unconsciously most people pair concepts that may be the converse of their chosen or stated beliefs. I was particularly upset to find out that my height is such a demonstrative indicator of upward mobility as it relates to managerial positions. That is to say that out of the millions of CEO’s in the country, less than 10 are 5’5” or shorter (I’m 5’6”, on a good day).

An example of the IAT can be found (taken) here.

Fairly late in chapter 7, Ormrod¹ mentions the work of Dijksterhuis & Nordgren. I did some searching, and found a short summary of their work online. Their work is based on what they refer to as the “Unconscious Thought Theory”. The idea is that humans process information unconsciously, an idea that runs counter to the dual-store memory models which identify working memory, which itself is tied to the conscious, as the area in which processing occurs. In their studies, they investigate the differences in the decisions made by those individuals that consciously deliberate before making a decision, and those that do not. This is “crossed” with the complexity of the decision.

Their findings indicate that when tasks are relatively simple, conscious processing produces better, more satisfying results. Conversely, decisions that require the simultaneous rating, integration, and processing of multiple variables are better resolved by those individuals who do not consciously work towards a solution. Their experiments involved what I would refer to as a more traditional laboratory setting, in which participants were asked to makes decisions about the renting of different apartments and the purchasing of automobiles (two different studies) as well as more informal survey of shoppers exiting two retail stores (furniture – more complex and expensive, department store – less complex and cheaper). Participants in the first two studies made “wiser” decisions when given a more complex set of data when this information was processed unconsciously. Similarly, shoppers reported being more satisfied with their purchases from the furniture store (after several weeks) when they reported making the decision to purchase the item spontaneously.

The summary can be found here. There’s also a larger PDF file summarizing their work that isn’t too hard to find using Google.

1. Ormrod, Jeanne Ellis. (2008). Human Learning. Pearson.