The Power Of Unconscious Cognition
Stuck on a problem? Leave it.
For centuries creatives have noted how their Eureka moment’s occur not in deep contemplative thought, but at unexpected moments after a period of mental rest; in the shower for instance, whilst dreaming, or whilst going about the daily errands.
To reference just a few examples: Paul McCartney credits the melody of Imagine to a dream, Mathematician Poincaré famously noted that the solution to a mathematical problem came to him whilst daydreaming on an omnibus, and Nobel Prize winner Otto Loewi, who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter, came up with the experiment to prove this after waking up at 3am, twice, with the idea ready made for him so to speak.
Naturally these scientists and artists thought about a problem, but after reaching a point of frustration, and leaving it on ice, or sleeping on it, solutions occurred at a later date. And who can’t relate? Many a time I have tackled a problem and found myself utterly baffled, only to find a solution, without any conscious attempt, hours or days later, often at the most inopportune time. It seems that something was going on deep in the mind after I had turned my conscious attention elsewhere.
Moreover, I have encountered numerous references to such a creative process in my reading and viewing. In the hit HBO series Mad Men, Fictional Ad man Don Draper imparts some advice on idea generation to his apprentice Peggy Olsen:
“Just think about it deeply, then forget it. An idea will jump up in your face.”
Continuing, this exact process of intense thought on a problem, followed by an incubation period, was described by eminent Western Philosopher Bertrand Russell in his high-minded attempt at self-help The Conquest Of Happiness:
“I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon some rather difficult topic the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity- the greatest intensity of which I am capable- for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.”
Additionally, in a lecture delivered by British comedy legend John Cleese, co-creator of surreal comedy troupe Monty Python, Cleese credits unconscious cognition as his own tried and tested method to write sketches. In short, he recalls misplacing a comedy script, and then at a later date re-writing it from memory. After relocating the lost work, he compared the two, and said the second was far superior to the first, leading him to conclude:
“The only thing I could think was that my unconscious had been working on the sketch and improving it ever since I wrote it. I began to see a lot of my best work seemed to come as a result of my unconscious working on things when I wasn’t really attending to them.”
Intrigued by the idea that the unconscious mind could work on problems whilst we went about our day, I decided to dive into the scientific literature on the topic to see if there was any evidence to support such a theory. Long story short, there is plenty of research to suggest that after deep cogitation, a period of unfocused thinking can help with creative thought, particularly idea selection. It seems that an incubation period, where consciously gathered material is worked on subconsciously, does in fact help to generate novel solutions. For this process to start, however, sufficient material on a problem needs to be gathered.
A study at Columbia University support this, stating:
“Thus, conscious awareness of having reached a decision appears to arise when the brain’s representation of accumulated evidence reaches a threshold or bound.”
In short, once the unconscious has gathered a threshold of material, and is given time to work on it “underground”, the aha! moment occurs.
In a study by Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam, participants were told to generate items according to specific instructions; one group instantly did so after receiving the instructions, another after a few minutes of conscious thought, whilst another group was distracted, which was hypothesised to initiate “unconscious thought”. The results?
“It was concluded that whereas conscious thought may be focused and convergent, unconscious thought may be more associative and divergent.”
Divergent and associative thought is closely linked with creativity, as non-linear free flow thought is conducive to the creation of novel ideas. It would certainly help explain why Draper or Cleese would feel so indebted to it.
Another paper in 2014 by the Behavioural Science Institute at Radboud University, concluded that:
“People are likely to benefit more from an incubation period when they get stuck and, therefore, one can assume that a relatively long period of conscious thought should be preferred above a short period of conscious thought”
As Russel noted, and all those before him, getting stuck could be a sign you are on the right track. That frustration threshold means you have the raw data, and it now needs to be processed. The paper quite explicitly notes: “The current findings provide first empirical support for the idea that during an incubation period unconscious processes contribute to creative thinking, and that it is not merely the absence of conscious thought that drives incubation effects.”
In short, next time you find yourself stuck on a problem, particularly one that requires novel thinking, consider walking away from the issue for a while and letting your subconscious take over. Whilst conscious thought can be effective for problems requiring an analytical approach, it might actually undermine creative performance, which shows that the approach is dependent on the problem at hand. So my advice, in light of all this, is as follows: read everything you can on a topic or creative problem, and then give yourself permission to leave it. Sometimes, leaving a problem, after conscious cogitation, is the best path to solving it.
