The Inner World of Unaware Phenomena

Book excerpt: In this The Inner World of Unaware Phenomena: Pathways to Brain, Behavior, and Implicit Memory, authors Bruce J. Diamond, Amy E. Learmonth, and Katherine Makarec argue that there is an inner world within all of us that profoundly impacts our lives, and that memories, perceptions, tastes, preferences, biases, and beliefs are encoded and expressed on an unaware, largely non-conscious level. In other words, many aspects of our lives and actions are guided and influenced by factors about which we may know very little, but which nevertheless alter the quality, substance, and trajectory of our lives, our loves, our likes, and our dislikes. Drawing on novel experimental designs and computer and imaging-based technologies, the authors demonstrate that people can react to faces and places in measurable ways, despite the fact that they may profess to having never seen or visited these faces or places. The authors show that these unaware phenomena are not isolated instances, but rather that they permeate and influence virtually every aspect of our lives.