What is REALLY the "unconcious"? Wat makes us act as we do? Interview with John A. Bargh

His lines of research all focus on unconscious mechanisms that underlie social perception, evaluation and preferences, and motivation and goal pursuit in realistic and complex social environments. That each of these basic psychological phenomena occur without the person's intention and awareness, yet have such strong effects on the person's decisions and behavior, has considerable implications for philosophical matters such as free will, and the nature and purpose of consciousness itself.



"We discovered a new vein of research — the relation between physical and social or psychological concepts — that we came to by taking evolutionary principles seriously and applying them to psychology. We weren't using evolutionary psychology, which has largely been focused on mating and reproduction. Our focus, rather, was in terms of evolutionary biology and the basic principles of natural selection: and that field makes clear that humans must have had these kinds of mechanisms or these processes to guide our behavior prior to evolution or emergence of consciousness."

Who is John A. Bargh?
Professor of social psychology at Yale University and director of the ACME (Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation and Evaluation) Lab. In 2007 he received the Donald T. Campbell Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology for distinguished contributions to social psychology, and later that year received the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/bargh.html

Full Interview and transcript:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bargh09/bargh09_index.html