How we are being influenced without even knowing: Unconscious integration of external stimuli

It is one thing to be told that much of behavior reflects unconscious processing -it is another to actually have that message proven with an actual experience. The breadth and power of the unconscious eluded me until I saw how this level of processing relates to my life. It was demonstration in class involving a checkerboard where differing levels of gray created the illusion of different colors (1) that convinced me unconscious processing affects the way we process the world.
    We had been discussing visual processing for more than a week in the class and thought I understood. I knew that the brain could only interpret certain signals and filled in the rest, I was conscious of it. However during that demonstration, my Unconscious finally kicked in as well and I really understood. The conscious (me knowing what was going on ‘up there’ was working without the unconscious (me actually seeing the effect of the way visual processing works). In my case it took the activation of my unconscious to complete my experience. Although I was not fully convinced of this phenomenon until recently, others have been exploiting it for years, whether consciously or not.
    A 1984 study by Brian Mullen of Syracuse University investigated three national nightly news programs anchored by Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather. In a previous part of the study Mullen showed muted video segments of the three news anchors covering the campaign (during the Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale election). Each Anchor was rated on a 21-point scale measuring the emotional content of their expression with the highest point on the scale being extremely positive. Dan Rather scored equally when talking about both presidential candidates. The same was true for Brokaw. However, Peter Jennings scored 4 points higher when he talked about Reagan. The really interesting part occurs in a follow up study. Mullen called people across the country that regularly watch network news and asked them who they voted for. In every case, those who watched ABC with Peter Jennings voted for Reagan in far greater numbers than those who watched CBS or NBC. Years later this experiment was repeated during the Dukakis-George Bush campaign, with similar results. In a phone survey viewers who watched ABC were more likely to have voted for Bush (2). Naturally, ABC and Peter Jennings denied all claims that he was influencing viewers. In fact, during that time ABC showed more anti-Reagan programs than other stations. The power lies in the ability of the unconscious to overcome conscious signals. It was the un-vocalized pro-Reagan bias that Jennings showed with his facial expressions that seemed to have influenced his viewers, not what he was saying. Every day our faces act as transmission towers broadcasting our thoughts to the rest of the world. The problem occurs when our thoughts do not match up with what we want the rest of the world to see. In Jennings case, the unintentional impact on those around was significant enough to perhaps change the fate of the nation.
    Signals that we are unconscious of can overpower both signals that we are aware of, and the resulting behavior. But does it work the other way around? It seems as if conscious behavior can control our unconscious as well. Gary Wells and Richard E. Petty performed a study linking head movement and thinking process. A large group of students were recruited for what they were told was a market research study by a company making headphones. They were given a headset and were told the company wanted to test their function when they were in motion. All of the students listened to songs and then heard a radio editorial arguing the tuition at their university should be raised. Part of the group were told to sake their heads from side to side, another part were told to shake their heads up and down, the final control kept their heads still. When they were finished they students were given a set a questions asking them the quality of the songs, the last question was the important one: “What do you feel would be an appropriate dollar amount for undergraduate tuition per year?” The students who kept their heads still were unmoved by the editorial and the tuition they guessed was just about where tuition was already. Those who shook their heads form side to side wanted tuition to fall, and those who were told to nod their heads up and down wanted tuition to rise! (3) The deliberate motion of their own bodies caused them unconscious bias about what they heard. However, the students seemed to be oblivious to the reason they wanted tuition to rise. In this case, an intentional behavior (head movement) was internalized and re-filtered through the unconscious and resulted in choices that were consistent with that same behavior. If this applies true to other situations, free will becomes an obsolete concept. All our choices and behaviors are determined by external stimuli, whether we are aware of it happening or not.
    We do not live alone, and since our choices seem to be affected by the external environment, it follows that those in our lives can influence our behavior with their own. Mimicry is one of the means by which we infect each other with our emotions. It is commonly thought emotion goes inside out-we feel sad so we frown or we feel happy so we smile. Emotional contagion suggests the opposite is also true. If I make you smile I can make you happy, if I can make you frown I can make you sad. Thus, emotion also goes outside in. Howard Friedman, a psychologist at the University of California Riverside, matched up two people, one whom he determined was good at sending emotion (a high scorer) and one who he determined was not (a low scorer). They filled out a questioner asking how they felt ‘at that instant’. Then they were told to sit in a room together for two minutes without talking. After they were given a questioner about how they were feeling. In just two minutes, without a word being spoken, the low scorer had picked up the mood of the high-scorer. (5)
    The conscious and unconscious are tightly intertwined and both play integral parts in determining our behavior. In the case of Peter Jennings, he projected a bias that overcame anything that he actually said and caused perhaps thousands of viewers to be influenced. The students own behavior was enough to determine their opinion, and in turn we can use our behavior to influence others. This ‘subliminal effect’ is real. The University College of London performed a study on unconscious processing. Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren't aware of -- but one that reaches the retina -- has an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe. Subjects' brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of having seen it. (4) As hard as I tried I could not fully experience visual processing until my unconscious kicked in and overwhelmed my conscious cognition. Although the opposite of what happened with Jennings (unconscious overcoming conscious), this still demonstrates the power of unconscious processing. We must be aware of how our brain processes unconscious stimuli in order to better understand cognition and behavior.

1) (/bb/neuro/neuro04/checkercomp.html)
2) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jennings)
3) (http://www.increasebrainpower.com/rational-opinions.html)
4) (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308121938.htm)
5) (http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~friedman/nvcabstract.html)