We execute thousands of behaviors and gestures in a day, some are meaningless, others communicate important messages. Many Americans believe that when they are speaking or being spoken to, they are in control of their actions; this is true, but to an extent. It is rather common to think that our social behavior is always under conscious control, but recent psychological evidence suggests that the majority of human social interaction is expressed subconsciously through different features of our body language, especially in American culture. Additionally, our subconscious biases affect decision making in sometimes harmful ways, but evidence shows that our subconscious tendencies can be consciously overcome through forms of manipulation, both physically and through the use of will. I will go into detail on the aspects of the subconscious process regarding body language and decision making.
Subconscious:
The subconscious is defined as the generally unconscious thought process that guides our everyday thinking. Anthony Greenwald, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, states in one of his publishings, “Much social cognition occurs in an implicit mode. This conclusion comes from a reinterpretation of many findings that indicate the importance of implicit operation of attitudes” (Greenwald & Banaji 20). This idea also strongly emphasizes the concept that past experiences affect our current cognition, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Greenwald and Banaji have thoroughly researched this concept and concluded that “traces of past experience affect some performance, even though the influential earlier experience is not remembered in the usual sense” (Greenwald & Banaji 4). These conclusions are obvious to any psychology student, but it is important to recognize that there is an extent in which these subconscious thought processes guide our decision making. Greenwald and Banaji, through their extended research and meta-analysis, have found that “decision making settings are suggested by an interaction of both implicit and explicit social cognition” (Greenwald & Banaji 20). This means that our decision making process is made of both our conscious, aware mind and our underlying subconscious. This combination guides us throughout our daily lives; decision making in simple day to day tasks would take unnecessarily long if we did not rely on our subconscious to make decisions more quickly. Therefore the subconscious is a thought process that allows humans to perform at a higher efficiency, but it is important to consider the way it may influence our conscious behavior whether or not we are aware of it.
Body Language:
Body language is perhaps the most notable way in which our bodies consciously and subconsciously express our personality and/or mood. All nonverbal communication of the movement or position of the human body can be identified as body language. In certain scenarios, a person can reveal their intentions through body language. For example, when someone wants a chance to ask questions or has strong objections, they usually reveal it in their body language response (Hargrave). Differences in similar body language gestures can express entirely different emotions surrounding a given context. For example, someone who is gently flapping their hand and one who is thrashing the air are displaying the same gesture but expressing very different emotions; the first expressing a friendly wave and the latter expressing distress (Caldwell). These social cues of body language are developed by the influence of American culture such as school, movies, and media. In American society there is a visible trend that one’s body language reflects one’s emotions in a culturally identifiable way.
Subconscious Decision Making:
It is easy to believe that our subconscious tendencies cannot be changed because we can’t understand the thought process that that causes these tendencies. However, recent research has suggested that our subconscious tendencies can be altered by taking certain approaches. As leading expert Dr. Rachlinski has revealed, “Researchers have found that people may have the ability to compensate for the effects of implicit bias. If they are internally driven or otherwise motivated to suppress their own biases, people can make judgments free from biases” (Rachlinski 8). This can be applied to implicit body language through the same concept. By using a tactic of training certain body functions to act a certain way, one can manipulate a habit or tendency. As an example for posture, it is a common habit to sit casually in a posture that feels natural and comfortable, but if a person wanted to change their posture habits, they would do so by consciously and repeatedly correcting his/her own posture until they had gained the new posture habit desired. This concept of consciously overcoming subtle actions over time allows the subconscious brain to be trained into a different habit. This notion can be applied to the many components of body language, similar to the posture example.
Implicit actions and tendencies can be measured and recorded using elaborate tests and studies, these results can bear surprising news for people who believe that they are free from certain biases. The racial IAT is a famous test used to evaluate the implicit biases of an individual who is instructed to click either left or right with a given prompt to define each side to answer. Then the test would display different ethnic children while the subject must respond as quickly as possible to define each race/word. The results showed contradictory results for those who believed that they erased racism from their decision making. Individuals from a variety of racial background who, in practice, were not racist found that their reaction time and word matching favored whites over colored people by a significant amount. These results revealed that people tended to have an implicit racial bias in their decision making that they weren’t aware of, regardless of their views on race. At this point, one may ask whether this bias actually makes a significant difference. This test taken under scholarly authority of Dr. Rachlinski found in his results that “implicit bias accounted for roughly six percent of the variation in actual behavior” (Rachlinski 8). Compared to the negligible amount that some people had assumed, this six percent variation is a surprising amount. This implicit racial bias, as an aspect of the subconscious, is a detriment to the community as well as an injustice in the U.S. court systems. This discrimination, although unintended, is an important issue with potentially lasting effects. In their research report, “Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes,” Dr. Greenwald and Dr. Banaji have found that this bias can be overcome, inferring that, “[using intentional focus as a tool] towards weakening the effects of implicit cognition supports consciousness raising as a strategy for avoiding unintended discrimination. That is, when a decision maker is aware of the source and nature of a bias in judgment, that bias may effectively be anticipated and avoided” (Greenwald & Banaji 19). Therefore, in order to avoid unintended consequences that may occur because of our subconscious upbringing, we ought to gain conscious awareness of our
Conclusion:
Although the traditional view is that our social behavior is always under conscious control, there are features of decision making and body language that are guided by our subconscious thought process, but they can be manipulated to one’s advantage through conscious awareness. On the other hand, some tendencies of our subconscious processes can, and have been known to, act in potentially harmful ways. I believe that these harmful tendencies ought to be overcome in order to avoid unintended discrimination and gain greater control over our behaviors.