Consciousness Definition
Consciousness refers to the subjective experience of oneself and one’s environment. This experience includes the awareness of one’s feelings and emotions and the awareness of, and perceived control over, one’s thoughts and behaviors. Conscious processes stand in contrast to subconscious (or nonconscious) processes, which occur outside of awareness and without intentional control.
意识背景和历史
Consciousness is the familiar lens through which humans view their day-to-day worlds, yet no concept has proven more difficult for people to explain or understand. How do thoughts arise? How does subjective experience relate to, or come out of, physical processes in the brain? Such questions are often referred to as the hard problem of consciousness. It is these questions that challenged thinkers like Rene Descartes many centuries ago (he suggested that the mind is of a nonphysical substance separate from the brain), and it is these same issues that continue to puzzle countless scientists and philosophers in the present day. In contrast, psychologists and other academics have been slightly more successful in addressing the so-called easy problem of consciousness, which refers to questions of how cognitive processes influence behavior and how people react to their subjective experiences. With regard to consciousness, these are the questions that social psychologists are most concerned with today.
关于意识的简单问题的早期观念在心理学领域有些散布,因为并非所有的心理学家都认为意识过程是一个重要的现象。西格蒙德·弗洛伊德(Sigmund Freud)以与无意识的ID分开发挥意识的自我和超级go的作用,以解决意识的简单问题而闻名,他将其描述为本能和欲望的储层。然而,尽管弗洛伊德和其他像他这样的其他人早期强调有意识和无意识的阶层之间的相互作用,但B. F. Skinner等科学家延迟了对有意识过程的充分理解,他们强调了心理学研究中可观察到的可观察行为的利用。几十年来,心理学一直以心灵为主导,作为一个接收输入并展示输出的黑匣子,但其内容与科学研究无关。
辩论意识的效用
当社会心理学家在20世纪后期几十年中开始越来越多地专注于思考过程时,他们的许多令人惊讶的发现表明,有意识的系统充满了缺陷和不准确性。研究人员表明,人们无法通过内省来准确描述其判断,决策和行为背后的因果关系。此外,人们经常错误地归因于目前的情绪背后的动力,在某些情况下,他们完全标记了自己的情绪。关于意识的最新研究表明,有意识的思想实际上可能是对决策过程的障碍,而且,人们发现人们误认为他们的行为是否在他们的有意识控制下发生。这些结果共同将意识描绘成一种糟糕的工具,可以做到每天经验表明它做得很好的一件事,这为个人提供了对自己的思想,感觉和行为的认识。为了回应这些发现,许多心理学家已准确质疑什么功能意识的服务。
Research on automatic behaviors has added to the confusion over the utility of consciousness. Social psychologists continue to accrue evidence that most human behaviors can be explained by automatic, non-conscious processes. Social psychologists have shown that people move, process information, and even engage in complex, goal-driven behaviors in automatic ways independent of conscious thought or conscious awareness. Such findings have caused many of today’s thinkers to propose that consciousness may in fact be a functionless side effect of other processes in the brain.
Despite the flaws inherent to conscious processes, consciousness does play an important role in various lines of research in social psychology. Many researchers study the use of conscious control in overriding automatic thoughts, impulses, and behaviors. This work has led to a better understanding of self-regulatory processes in which impulsive desires can be suppressed in favor of delayed rewards and long-term goals. Similarly, conscious control has also been shown to allow for more desirable interpersonal behaviors as in the case of stereotype suppression. Stereotypes of others have been found to arise quite automatically in the brain when people encounter individuals of particular groups. However, these stereotypes can be consciously overridden in favor of more accurate, more acceptable, and less stereotypic types of responding. In addition, conscious processes are often credited with allowing humans the unique ability to integrate different types of information, think symbolically, and use logical reasoning. Thus, the research supporting the utility of consciousness is considerable, and trends suggest that it will continue to grow. Still, exactly what consciousness is or isn’t useful for is a very much debated topic in social psychology today.
意识中的双重过程
对有意识过程的理解使人们对心灵的普遍看法受益,其中包含两个主要组成部分,即被称为双工头脑的想法。这个想法认为,头脑的一个组件之一是自动系统,以快速,高效和不受控制的处理为标志,通常发生在意识之外。第二个组件是有意识的系统,以缓慢,精力,基于规则的处理通常占据意识的内容。社会心理现象的双重过程模型考虑了双工思想的两个组成部分如何相互作用以创造思想和行为。这些模型通常将自动系统描述为从事大部分工作,处理大量信息,并允许快速,自动和习惯响应。有意识的系统监视自动系统的输出,集成重要的信息位,并在必要时覆盖或更改自动系统的输出。自动系统使一个人在电话通话或思考其他计划时可以开车回家;有意识的系统是当驾驶员必须停下来救护车或破坏意外的行人时开始。
参考:
- Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252-1265.
- Chaiken,S。,&Trope,Y。(1999)。社会心理学的双过程模型。纽约:吉尔福德出版社。
- Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist, 58, 697-720.
- Wegner,D。M.(2002)。意识意志的幻想。剑桥:麻省理工学院出版社。