Science News

What is nine plus six, plus eight? You may not realise it, but you already know the answer. It seems that we unconsciously perform more complicated feats of reasoning than previously thought – including reading and basic mathematics.

New research shows that the brain's visual perception system automatically and unconsciously guides decision-making through valence perception.

Nobel Prize-winning neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel describes research which hints at the possibility of a biological basis to the unconscious mind.

When linguists talk about unconscious or implicit language learning, they don’t mean learning while you sleep.

An experiment that Sigmund Freud could never have imagined 100 years ago may help lend scientific support for one of his key theories, and help connect it with current neuroscience.

“You would be amazed to find how often we mislead ourselves, regardless of how smart we think we are, when we attempt to explain why we are behaving the way we do,” Dichter observed in 1960, in his book “The Strategy of Desire”. He held that marketplace decisions are driven by emotions and subconscious whims and fears, and often have little to do with the product itself. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Dichter saw human motivation as an “iceberg”, with two-thirds hidden from view, even to the decision-maker. “What people actually spend their money on in most instances are psychological differences, illusory brand images,” he explained.

New research finds we’re better able to identify genuinely creative ideas when they’ve emerged from the unconscious mind.