Conscious and Unconscious

Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkard’s Walk, has a lot of interesting things to say about how we make decisions – not as rationally as we think!

In this video he teaches a group about how our minds exist in two places at once … the thinking that we’re aware of constantly, and the thinking we don’t know is going on. Lots of new research in the past two decades has improved our understanding of what the mind is doing to impact the way we live. Now, scientists think that our perceptions, decisions, judgments and even our memories are far more influenced by our unconscious thinking that we realize.

Of course, advertisers have known this for years. So have sports coaches and the best leaders. They use that awareness to get people to do things. That kind of influence has always been more art than science. Maybe in the future it will be more science than art.

Credit: Nicolas Ferrando, Lois Lammerhuber, Ars Electronica