Are you master of your domain?

"I must be walking in my sleep, but how can I be walking in my sleep if I know enough to KNOW I’m walking in my sleep? Ha, ha, ha, tsk, tsk, tsk. The strange things people do in their sleep … especially when they’re awake." – Daffy Duck

In 1911, French physician Edouard Claparede reported the case of a female patient who had lost her ability to create new memories. Each time Claparede walked into the room, he had to reintroduce himself to her, as she had no recollection of ever having met him – even though she may have spoken to him moments earlier. One day, he decided to do an experiment. As usual, he entered the room, and held out his hand to greet her, and as usual she shook his hand. But this time, Claparede had concealed a tack in the palm of his hand, and pricked her with it – obviously a painful experience. The next time he returned to the room, she still did not recognise him but she refused to shake his hand; she did not know why she wouldn't shake his hand – she just wouldn't. She had subconsciously learned that shaking hands with Claparede would cause her harm, and her brain – in fact, her subconscious mind – stored the bad experience in memory, to prevent the painful experience from reoccurring (even though she consciously had no recollection of what caused the unpleasantness).


Clarapede's patient, and even Daffy Duck, are extreme examples which illustrate that there are things going on in our minds that we are not aware of. If I may steal yet another quote from Seinfeld, we are not really "masters of our domains".

Psychologists have long been aware that small, unnoticeable stimuli often fail to be consciously perceived, yet may lead to a behavioural response. Fifty years ago, Vance Packard, with his bestseller "The Hidden Persuaders" popularized this "subliminal perception" with the famous story of the messages "DRINK COKE" and "EAT POPCORN" flashed briefly on the screen during a movie at the cinema. This messages were flashed so quickly - only for one third of a millisecond - that the viewers did not consciously perceive them, but the intention was to get the viewers to consume more coke and popcorn. Did it work? Well, it was claimed that Coke sales increased by 18 percent and popcorn sales increased by 58 percent after this experiment, although there are doubts about these claims.

In his book "The Secret Sales Pitch: An Overview of Subliminal Advertising," August Bullock argues the case that subtle kinds of subliminal messages certainly do affect behaviour and they are widely used by advertisers to try and subvert our free will. Bullock argues that , since the 1950s, optical illusions and double meanings have been secretly embedded in mass media in order to manipulate the public unconsciously.

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising and, indeed, there is little evidence that subliminal stimuli can influence our actions or attitudes. But scientific studies - particularly those conducted by Anthony Marcel in the 1970s - have established the phenomenon in a well-controlled way. Marcel found that words presented to too fast to be consciously identified are still processed in the brain, at least to the level of meaning. For example, if the word "river" is flashed for a very short time , a person will deny having seen anything. But if this person is then asked to choose a word that goes with "bank", he or she is more likely to choose "boat" instead of "money". Brain scans have shown that weak stimuli of short duration activate particular brain regions without a person being conscious of them.

Examples of subliminal perception can be found in people with neurological damage - much like in the example of Clarapede's patient. One example is a syndrome called blindsight. Patients with blindsight have damage to the primary visual cortex - just where the optical signals reach the cortex. Blindsight patients receive visual information from the world, but they say they are not conscious of it. If you show them an object they claim not to see it; yet forced to guess, they are surprisingly accurate. They can reach for the visual object, point to its location, and even track it with their eyes. Yet, they vehemently insist that they have no visual experience of the object. Another neurological syndrome in which subliminal perception occurs is prosopagnosia or face agnosia. Patients with prosopagnosia are unable to recognize familiar faces. Although they may be aware that they are looking at a person's face, they are unable to say who the person may be. Prosapagnosics report that they have no awareness of perceiving any information regarding whose face they may be viewing. Yet, despite this absence of conscious awareness, some patients with prosapagnosia are able to choose which of two names goes with each familiar face that they claim not to be able to recognize.

Much of what we do is unconscious. When you and I read a sentence such as this one, there is much more activity going on unconsciously than consciously. But try reading this sentence upside down, and you will probably become conscious of reading every word ... you may even be talking to yourself as you're reading it. If we could take a scan of your brain as you are doing your upside down reading, we would see much more intense activity than if you were to read right side up. Any skill that you have to learn - driving a car, or a new language, or upside down reading - becomes automatic when practiced for a long time, until it becomes second nature to us, and most of the activity unconscious.

Since so much of our behaviour and activities are handled unconsciously, how can humans ever claim to have total free will? How can we say that we are truly masters of our domain?
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