You are on page 1of 4

Riley 1

Victoria Riley-LoMedico
Mrs. DeBock
English 4 Honors
March 4, 2015
The Daily Subconscious
Unconscious thoughts and feelings influence not only the way we perceive ourselves and
the world around us, but also our everyday actions. The conscious mind has always been thought
of as the one in charge, but recent studies have shown that may not be correct. It has been found
that the subconscious is responsible for almost everything humans do. The unconscious mind is
in control of most bodily functions, and has a limitless space of information it can hold. The
conscious mind can only have one train of thought at a time, while the subconscious has many
actions, thoughts, and feelings pacing all at the same time. The subconscious contains all life
experiences, memories,beliefs, instincts, and every insignificant detail that has ever happened.
The subconscious plays a crucial role in creativity, learning, memory, and decision-making.
The subconscious is the basis for all creative thinking, it is the seed of where all creativity
stems. However, since it is being mulled over by the unconscious, it occurs in as a eureka
moment in the conscious. During an experiment, scientists found creative thinking to have two
different stages: the quiet inspiration stage and the active elaboration stage (Douglas The
Other You). People with the greatest difference in brain activity between the two stages were the
most creative. People with high creativity are more likely for their ideas to overspill into
consciousness (Douglas, The Other You) giving them richer mental resources to make
creative connections. Salvador Dali conjured up many of his surrealist paintings from his
subconscious. In fact, many songs, poems, and books originated from the unconscious.

Riley 2

The unconscious mind also helps with learning and memorization, containing every detail
of every day. Babies are born with their subconscious running on full blast; everything they do is
an instinct or gut reaction. Infants gather language subconsciously, which allows them to use the
information more efficiently. A new language is difficult for adults to master, because the
learning is all or mostly conscious. When people are learning or cramming for tests, stress
actually makes the subconscious mind click into action, helping the conscious mind learn and
memorize. The conscious and unconscious mind work together to help the learning efficiency be
maintained (Ravis). When not purposefully trying to remember information, it is stored in the
subconscious mind. While that information is unattainable to the conscious mind, They still have
an influence on behavior as well as the knowledge of different tasks (Cherry). It learns new
information and gathers old data every second.
While people may think that the conscious mind would be the best for decision-making,
the subconscious mind has been linked to making better decisions. In fact, the University of
Amsterdam in the Netherlands has found that people are happier with their decision when acting
on gut instinct than when forced to try to think the choice through rationally (Douglas The
Other You). The subconscious is able to processes complex information that the conscious mind
has difficulty processing. When under pressure, snap decisions are crucial to many dangerous
situations; those snap decisions come from the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is
capable of learning and what it learns can affect our conscious decisions (Motluk). It helps to
pursue goals and muster necessary motivation to actually achieve it, without any awareness
(Bargh). Unconscious decisions are made before the conscious mind has decided itself. A time
lapse of 50 milliseconds exists where the subconscious is telling the conscious mind what to do

Riley 3

(Dougal How Powerful Is The Subconscious). In fact, the subconscious makes the decision
when to become aware.
The subconscious affects many aspects of everyday life, such as: creativity, learning,
memory, and decision-making. The unconscious mind is a massive influence in human lives, yet
it is still not known as the one in charge. While numerous discoveries have been made about the
subconscious, many details are still obscure. The journey of learning about the subconscious has
just begun to emerge. Human lives would be greatly impacted and limited if not for the
subconscious. The unconscious asserts its presence in every moment of life, whether awake or
absorbed in the depths of a dream.

Works Cited

Bargh, John A. "Our Unconscious Mind." Scientific American 310.1 (2014): 30-37. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

Riley 4

Cherry, Kendra. "Implicit and Explicit Memory." About Education. N.p., n.d. Web.

Douglas, Kate. "How Powerful Is The Subconscious? (Cover Story)." New Scientist 206.2754
(2010): 32. Science Reference Center. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

Douglas, Kate. "Subconscious: The Other You." New Scientist 196.2632 (2007): 42.
MasterFILE Premier. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

Motluk, Alison. "Subliminal Study Shows Subconscious Learning Is Possible."New Scientist.


N.p., 25 Oct. 2001. Web. 04 Mar. 2015

Rivas, Anthony. "Subconscious and Conscious Memory Work Together To Learn Efficiently
While Under Stress." Medical Daily. 31 July 2013. Web.

You might also like