Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson

Notes

• Conscious and Unconscious processing
  • Like computer system (network card and you checking email)
  • Outsourcing tasks
• Emotions make decision making efficient
  • Feelings are functional (most of the time)
  • Adaptive Unconscious as a generator for gut feeling
• Activation potential of information in memory
  • How accesible an idea is
  • Información has high or low activation potential
• Unconscious vs Conscious
  • Unconscious is older from evolutionary perspective
  • Who is in control?
• Extra information does not always increase accuracy of explanation
• Trying to quantify everything doesn't work
  • Pro contra lists
  • House requirements list example
• Concious can't access all the variables the Adaptive Unconscious takes in to reach a decision/liking something
• Introspection is a process of construction and inference; does not always unlock the full truth